Some 860,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as the coronavirus pandemic continued to weigh on the US labor market, the feds said Thursday.
Last week’s initial jobless claims dropped from the prior week’s revised count of 893,000 but brought the total for the coronavirus pandemic to more than 61 million — a number larger than the combined populations of California and Florida.
“The economy still looks to be stuck in a rut and unable to gain traction with new job losses higher than any week of the Great Recession over a decade ago,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank.
Unemployment filings have remained at historic highs for 26 straight weeks as employers struggled to bounce back from the COVID-19 lockdowns that sparked record job losses this spring.
The most recent seasonally adjusted total was well below the late March peak of roughly 6.8 million but still exceeded the pre-pandemic record of 695,000, according to the US Department of Labor data.
Continuing claims, which track ongoing joblessness on a one-week lag, also fell by 916,000 in the week ending Sept. 5 to about 12.6 million, their lowest level since their early May peak of 24.9 million, the figures show.
But people laid off in the spring who are still out of work may be exhausting the 26 weeks of unemployment benefits that states generally provide. That could lead to a jump in applications for the federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which provides another 13 weeks of payments, according to Bloomberg economist Eliza Winger.
The number of people claiming those benefits indeed rose by 104,683 to about 1.5 million in the week ending Aug. 29, the most recent for which figures are available. Some 29.7 million people were receiving some kind of unemployment aid that week, an increase of roughly 98,000 from the prior week, the feds said.
“All these factors add up to a situation where quick advances in driving down unemployment are stalling, and we can now expect tougher going, especially without more stimulus and a faster decline in COVID-19 cases,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.
The latest jobless claims were filed in the same week as the federal employment survey that will be used to compile the closely watched September jobs report. The last report showed the economy adding 1.4 million jobs in August, down from 1.7 million in July.
