Weekly jobless claims rise to 770K as US marks one year of recession
Initial jobless claims in the US have unexpectedly risen to their highest level in one month, even as states loosen Covid-19 restrictions on businesses.
Seasonally adjusted new applications for unemployment insurance totaled 770,000 last week, according to Labor Department data published on Thursday, rising slightly as the US marked one year since the start of the coronavirus recession.
Jobless claims rose by 45,000 in the week ending March 13 from the previous week’s revised total of 725,000. The number of new applicants for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance dropped sharply to 282,394 last week from 478,914 in the week ending March 6.
Altogether, 18.2 million Americans were on some form of jobless aid in the week ending February 27, roughly a year after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic shattered the US economy.
Economists have cautioned that a drop in unemployment claims in late February and early March was also fuelled in part by a blast of winter weather across the central US, particularly Texas, the country’s second-most populous state.
One in 4 workers relied on unemployment benefits at some point during the pandemic, and the US has sent out more than 1 billion payments since the beginning of the crisis, according to a report from The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.
The US has yet to recover 9.5 million jobs lost at the onset of the pandemic, and COVID-19’s devastating impact on several crucial industries could make it harder for those workers to find new positions quickly. Even so, policymakers and economists expect the U.S. to rebound sharply once the country achieves herd immunity, potentially later this year.
President Joe Biden last week signed a $1.9tn stimulus bill, which included an extension to federally provided emergency unemployment aid and a third round of stimulus cheques.
The Federal Reserve estimated that the US economy would grow 6.5 percent this year, helped by the vaccine rollout and fiscal stimulus. But the central bank signalled on Wednesday that it would hold interest rates near zero until at least 2024. Jay Powell, the Fed’s chair, said “no one should be complacent” about the economic rebound despite positive trends.
(Source: agencies)
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