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Some 963,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as initial jobless claims dipped below 1 million for the first time since mid-March, the feds said Thursday.
But experts said the crisis was far from over as the number of applications filed during the coronavirus pandemic climbed to 56.2 million — a staggering figure equivalent to 35 percent of the nation’s workforce.
“Seeing initial claims dip below 1 million is a positive sign that layoffs are easing, but we’re far from celebrating a steady recovery,” Glassdoor senior economist Daniel Zhao said. “Tens of millions of people are still collecting unemployment benefits at a level far above the worst points of the Great Recession.”
Thursday’s US Department of Labor report followed 20 straight weeks with more than a million initial claims, a level that would have been unthinkable before the pandemic.
While they remained higher than the Great Recession’s peak of 665,000, last week’s filings fell from 1.191 million the prior week, putting the numbers back on a downward trend after two weeks of increases in mid-July.
Initial claims decreased in all but six states, with Texas, Florida and Georgia reporting big drops even as they battled recent surges in COVID-19 infections.
Continuing jobless claims, which measure sustained unemployment on a one-week lag, also fell to about 15.5 million in the week ending Aug. 1.
The latest batch of claims followed the July 31 expiration of a $600 boost to weekly unemployment benefits that had been a lifeline for millions of jobless Americans, which “may discourage fresh filings,” Bloomberg economists Andrew Husby and Eliza Winger said.
President Trump issued an executive order last week to restore up to $400 in weekly payments, but it hasn’t been implemented.
Experts say it’s crucial for Congress to take another stab at shoring up the pandemic-battered economy as more than 28 million workers were collecting some kind of unemployment aid in the week ending July 25, according to federal data.
“It remains quite stunning that Congress has yet to agree on a fresh round of relief legislation with so many Americans hurting financially,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com.
The claim numbers were the latest sign of a tentative recovery in the labor market.
The nationwide unemployment rate fell to 10.2 percent last month from its April peak of 14.7 percent as states eased lockdowns aimed at controlling the pandemic. But job growth slowed to 1.8 million from 4.8 million in June as the US grappled with record numbers of COVID-19 cases.
