The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits during the pandemic has eclipsed 40m, after an additional 2m people applied for the first time last week.
The data underscored the deep economic damage caused by coronavirus and the shutdown of restaurants, retail stores and other businesses since government restrictions were imposed, driving the US unemployment last month to its highest rate since Washington started tracking data in 1948.
A total of 40.8m Americans have filed for unemployment through state programmes over the past 10 weeks, data released by the labour department on Thursday showed.
Continuing claims, which tallies the number of unemployed who are actively receiving benefits, dropped 3.9m to 21.1m, accounting for 14.5 per cent of the workforce.
The pace of new jobless claims has slowed for eight consecutive weeks, as states have begun to emerge from coronavirus-related shutdowns and restart economic activity. The seasonally adjusted 2.1m initial claims last week reflected a drop from 2.4m a week earlier, which was revised slightly higher. The result matched economists’s forecast as polled by Reuters.
On an unadjusted basis, jobless claims dropped to 1.9m from 2.2m for the week that ended on May 23.
The federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance programme, which has extended aid to the self-employed or other individuals who would not qualify for regular unemployment compensation, counted 1.19m new applications. The number of filers during the previous week was revised lower to 1.25m from 2.23m, reflecting incorrect data for Massachusetts that inflated the state’s figure by more than 1m.
Source: Economy - ft.com
