New Jobless Claims Edge Closer to Pre-Pandemic Norm

New jobless claims for the week ending Sept. 4 dropped 35,000 to 310,000, the lowest level since March 14, 2020’s pre-pandemic rate of 256,000, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported on Thursday (Sept. 9). The week prior was revised up by 5,000 to 345,000.

Continued weeks claimed for the week ending Aug. 21 was about 11.93 million, a decline of 255,757 from the previous week. By way of comparison, there were 30.42 million claims during the same period last year.

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During the week ending Aug. 21, extended benefits were available in Alaska, California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Texas.

Pandemic unemployment assistance ended in all states on Sept. 6, but for the week ending Aug. 21, 47 states reported a total of roughly 5.1 million continued weekly claims. In addition, 47 states reported 3.8 million continued claims for Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits.

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The states with the highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending Aug. 21 were Puerto Rico, District of Columbia, New Jersey, California, Illinois, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Hawaii and the Virgin Islands.

The biggest increases in initial claims for the week ending Aug. 28 were Missouri, Ohio, New York, Tennessee and Florida. The biggest declines were California, Illinois, Virginia, New Jersey and Oregon.

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“We are not seeing regular initial claims spike, so that would imply that the delta variant isn’t causing massive layoffs as we saw at the beginning of COVID,” Indeed economist AnnElizabeth Konkel told The Wall Street Journal. She added that “we’re still at the mercy of the pandemic,” noting that the increase in COVID-19 variant cases could still affect claims data.