U.S. Jobless Claims Rose as Layoffs Continued: Live Updates
Applications for jobless benefits rose last week as employers continued to lay off workers six months after the coronavirus pandemic first rocked the U.S. economy.
About 825,000 Americans filed for state unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That is up from 796,000 a week earlier, though it is far below the more than six million people a week who were filing for benefits during the peak period of layoffs in the spring. Those numbers do not reflect adjustments for seasonal fluctuations.
On an adjusted basis, last week’s total was 870,000, up from 866,000 the previous week.
In addition, 630,000 initial filings were recorded for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, an emergency federal program that covers freelancers, self-employed workers and others left out of the regular unemployment system. That program has been plagued by fraud and double-counting, and many economists say the data is unreliable.
By any measure, however, hundreds of thousands of Americans are losing their jobs each week, and millions more laid off earlier in the crisis are still relying on unemployed benefits to meet their basic expenses. Applications for benefits remain higher than at the peak of many past recessions, and after falling quickly in the spring, the number has declined only slowly in recent weeks.
“Compared to April, they’re trending down, but if you’re comparing to the pre-Covid era they are still so high,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist for the career site Indeed.
The recent letup in progress is particularly worrisome, Ms. Konkel said, because warm weather has allowed many businesses to shift operations outdoors. As colder weather hits Northern states in the weeks ahead, restaurants and other businesses are likely to begin laying off workers again.
“We’re losing steam, which is definitely not good heading into the winter,” she said.
The report on Thursday marked 27 weeks since the flood of layoffs began in mid-March. In most states, workers qualify for a maximum of 26 weeks of unemployment payments, meaning that workers who lost their jobs early in the crisis have begun to see their benefits expire.
An emergency program established by Congress in March offers an additional 13 weeks of benefits for most workers. And a separate federal program will provide extended benefits after that if the unemployment rate remains elevated. But experts on the unemployment system said there was a risk that benefits for some workers would lapse at least temporarily.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/09/24/business/stock-market-today-coronavirus