COVID-19 Danger Continues to Drive Joblessness in US
Source: NBC Miami
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell last week to 860,000, a historically high number of people that illustrates the broad economic damage still taking place nine months after the first case of COVID-19 was detected in the U.S.
The Labor Department said Thursday that U.S. jobless claims fell by 33,000 from the previous week and that 12.6 million are collecting traditional unemployment benefits, compared with just 1.7 million a year ago.
The pandemic has delivered a colossal shock to the economy. Until the pandemic upended the operations of American companies, from factories to family diners, weekly jobless aid applications had never exceeded 700,000 in the U.S. They’ve topped 700,000 for 26 consecutive weeks.
The overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, collapsed at an annual rate of 31.7% from April through June, by far the worst three months on record, as millions of jobs disappeared.
Read more: https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/business/covid-19-danger-continues-to-drive-joblessness-in-us/2293989/
Although new unemployment claims are going down, continuing layoffs are a continuing drag on the economy.
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From the official report from the Department of Labor https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf .
This is the latest available on this statistic-- there's a 2 1/2 week lag in this statistic.
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The following is from a week ago: (since then, it's gotten a bit worse, it's 29.8 million now instead of 29.6 million)
by Wolf Richter • Sep 10, 2020 •
Continued unemployment claims rise for second week, to 29.6 million, worst since Aug 1, meaning 18.4% of labor force is on unemployment insurance. State & federal initial claims jumped to 1.7 million in the week (not seasonally adjusted).
Total continued claims for unemployment insurance (UI) under all state and federal programs rose by 380,000, to 29.6 million people (not seasonally adjusted), the highest since August 1, according to the Department of Labor this morning. This was the second weekly increase in a row, after the 2.2-million jump last week.
These 29.6 million people who continued to claim UI under all programs translate into 18.4% of the civilian labor force of 161 million:
Blue columns – continued claims under state programs: +54k
The number of people who continued claiming UI under state programs rose by 54k to 13.2 million (not seasonally adjusted), the first increase after five decreases in a row. .........(more)
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/09/10/unemployment-crisis-going-in-wrong-direction-week-25-of-u-s-labor-market-collapse/
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Thanks marmar for the post in the Economy Group.
The ultimate source of the numbers: https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf
Something I've been yammering about for quite some time. It went from 27.0 million to 29.6 million in 2 weeks. (update: it went from 27.0 million to 29.8 million in 3 weeks)
As always, note the discrepancy between 29.6 M (update: 29.8 M) continuing claims, and the BLS's Friday (9/4) job report of 13.6 M unemployed.
