2.9 million continue to receive unemployment benefits while weekly claims remain high

More than 2.9 million Americans still receive traditional state unemployment benefits as the number of people seeking new weekly claims appears to have stabilized at a higher than expected level, federal officials said Thursday. .

Continuing claims fell by 366,000 from just over 3.26 million the previous week, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department. That figure rose to nearly 16 million at the same time last year, at the height of the pandemic.

Continuing claims have declined significantly from peaks seen in 2020, but the figure remains around twice as high as pre-pandemic levels.

Initial claims for unemployment benefits, seen as an indicator of layoffs, reached 385,000 last week, down 14,000 from the revised level of 399,000 the previous week, federal officials added.

The new weekly jobless claims correspond exactly to the expectations of economists surveyed by Dow Jones.

Weekly new claims have declined significantly from the 2020 peak of around 6.1 million new claims in a single week, but economists have expressed concern that they appear to have settled at a high level. these last weeks.

The country recorded on average just over 200,000 new requests per week in 2019.

The Labor Department’s report comes ahead of the release of the much-anticipated July jobs report on Friday.

Economists polled by Dow Jones expect the report to show the country created 845,000 jobs last month, maintaining the level of growth seen the month before.

But on Wednesday, payroll company ADP released its monthly report, which showed the private sector hired just 330,000 workers in July, well below the 653,000 new jobs expected.

Friday’s report, which comes amid growing concerns over the Delta variant of the coronavirus, will shed new light on the pace of the recovery in the labor market.

The new data series also comes a week after federal officials announced that U.S. GDP jumped 6.5% in the second quarter of the year, below expectations as inflation and supply shortages drove up. slowed down growth.