Initial claims increased to 744,000, up by 16,000, and the second straight increase.
I am thinking that initial claims will remain in the mid 700K range for a while yet:
Workers are slowly pulling away from unemployment assistance as a U.S. economic revival picks up speed, with initial filings for benefits holding near pandemic lows and the number of people receiving help dropping.
Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, increased by a seasonally adjusted 16,000 last week to 744,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week average, which smooths out volatility in the figures, rose slightly to 723,750 from 721,250. Claims are still well above the weekly average of around 220,000 in the year before Covid-19’s arrival.
The continued high rate of filings comes amid other signs of recent labor-market improvement. U.S. employers added 916,000 jobs in March, and the unemployment rate slipped to 6.0%, from 6.2% in the prior month.
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Moreover, the number of people receiving unemployment assistance is slowly declining. Continuing claims, which provide an approximation of the number of people receiving benefits, at the end of March reached their lowest level of the pandemic, declining slightly to 3.73 million. A broader reading that includes state and pandemic-related federal programs also eased slightly to 18.16 million.
As always, I am more of a pessimist, particularly with Coronavirus cases spiking and talk about the re-imposition of some restrictions becoming more common.
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