New jobless claims dropped below 800,000 for the first time during the pandemic, and although numbers are still way above normal levels, they are better than the pandemic’s peak.
The weekly Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report on Thursday (Feb. 25) indicated that in the week ending Feb. 20, initial jobless claims dropped to 730,000 from the previous week’s revised total of 841,000, a decrease of 111,000. The previous week was revised down by 20,000.
“Until people feel this is sustained and that there’s not another huge wave coming, I can’t imagine we’re going to see big changes in jobless claims for a while,” said Allison Schrager, an economist at the Manhattan Institute, per The New York Times.
For the week ending Feb. 6, the total number of continued weeks claimed for benefits in all programs was 19,042,686 up 701,102 from the week before. By way of comparison, during the same time frame last year, the number was significantly lower — 2,130,673.
“Jobless claims are the one data series that has been trending in the wrong direction of late,” Deutsche Bank economist Brett Ryan wrote in a note, per Yahoo Finance. “Weather-related issues may keep initial claims elevated for another week or two before we finally see a resumption of the downtrend.”
New jobless claims for the week ending Feb. 6 went down for the fourth week in a row. Claims are still above the peak of the Great Recession in 2007-08 of 665,000. Some 6.867 million jobless claims were filed when the pandemic hit in March.
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