U.S. jobless claims slow but underscore ongoing weakness

As business reopenings picked up nationwide, Americans filed nearly 2 million applications for unemployment benefits last week, reflecting a slowing — though far from a halt —in job losses.

Initial jobless claims for regular state programs totaled 1.88 million in the week ended May 30, Labor Department figures showed Thursday, down from 2.13 million the prior week. It was the first reading below 2 million since the coronavirus-related layoffs began en masse in mid-March. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 1.83 million claims in the latest week.

U.S. jobless claims drop below 2 million, while continuing claims inch higher

Continuing claims — the total number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits — increased to 21.5 million in state programs the week ended May 23, compared with analyst estimates for a decline. Most states reported declines from the prior week, and the latest increase in part reflects quirks from biweekly filing rules in California, which showed an unadjusted rise of about 618,000.

The four-week moving average of continuing claims fell to 22.4 million from 22.7 million, the first decline of the pandemic.

“Looking at the broad contour, it still looks very much like continuing claims peaked in early May,” said Andrew Hollenhorst, chief U.S. economist at Citigroup Inc. “We’re not coming down strongly in any sense, but this notion that the bottom has hit in terms of how bad things will be in the labor market is increasingly coming through in the data.”