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793,000 others American workers first applied for unemployment benefits last week on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Labor Department.
Unemployment claims continue to be stubbornly high: a slight decrease from the previous week’s claims, which were revised upwards. But it was also more than economists had expected and nearly four times as many claims as in the same period last year, just before the pandemic hit.
“The big picture is a labor market recovery struggling to pick up steam,” Sarah House, Wells Fargo senior economist, wrote in a note to clients.
In addition to regular state claims, 334,524 workers applied for benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program, which provides assistance to on-demand workers and the self-employed. This number is not seasonally adjusted. It was also a slight decrease from the previous week.
Together, 1.1 million workers filed a first claim last week, with no seasonal adjustment.
Continuing claims, which include workers who have filed at least two consecutive weeks of benefits, stood at 4.5 million.
In the week ended Jan. 23, the number of Americans receiving some form of government benefit increased by about 2.6 million to 20.4 million. Claimants have increased for the PUA program, as well as the Emergency Pandemic Unemployment Compensation Program, which provides benefits to those who have exhausted state aid.
It’s a sobering figure as the nation approaches the first anniversary of the start of the pandemic.
“We suspect that this increase reflects not only the softness of the job market during the holidays, as cases of Covid have increased and restrictions have been increased, but also extensions of eligibility under these programs by the December tax break package, ”House said.
In short, America’s jobs crisis is far from over.
Long-term unemployment is still a problem in this crisis, and it will continue to be so even after many unemployed workers are able to return to their previous jobs. Many newly unemployed workers in September and October experienced unemployment for the second time during the pandemic, according to a report from the JPMorgan Chase Institute released Thursday. The report also found that in October almost half of the unemployed had already been out of work for six months.
As the country waits for enough vaccines to be administered to achieve collective immunity, new variants of the coronavirus are casting a shadow over hopes of a complete economic reopening. For the hardest hit sectors, such as hospitality and travel, the emergence of these variants could interrupt plans to reopen in their tracks.
“While progress in immunization efforts curbed the increase in new layoffs in December, the rate at which the unemployed find new jobs and leave the jobless lists has yet to keep pace,” Andrew wrote Stettner, senior fellow at the Century Foundation. in comments sent by email.
In January, the US economy created a modest 49,000 jobs, reversing some of the losses recorded in December. The country remains down by around 10 million jobs since last February. For the unemployed, things are not improving fast enough. In Washington, that means there is still work to be done before unemployment assistance programs expire again in March.
Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the change in jobless claims from the previous week. They went down last week.
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