New jobless claims fall in Michigan
Numbers rise nationally
New Michigan jobless claims remained fairly constant last week although still at historic highs while Congress mulls a $1.9 trillion rescue package to aid struggling workers and businesses slammed by a year of the coronavirus pandemic.
Laid-off Michigan workers filed 11,133 new jobless claims for the week ending Feb. 27. While that’s a drop from the adjusted 14,376 new claims filed the prior week, continuing claims in the system remained nearly unchanged, indicating businesses and consumers continue to struggle with economic conditions and layoffs from the pandemic.
Continuing Michigan jobless claims, which lag new jobless claims by a week, were 167,131, more than twice the pre-pandemic level of a year ago.
Nationally, new jobless claims rose slightly by 9,000 to 745,000, according to numbers released Thursday by the U.S. Labor Department.
However, 4.3 million Americans are receiving traditional state unemployment benefits. Counting supplemental federal unemployment programs that were established to soften the economic damage from the virus, an estimated 18 million people nationally are collecting some form of jobless aid.
In Michigan, the state unemployment agency has paid out 30.2 billion in jobless benefits to 3.16 million unique claimants since mid March of last year, indicating that three-quarters of Michigan’s 4,097,261 workers who qualify for jobless benefits have been laid off at some point during the last year.
While Michigan’s unemployment rate is at 4.1 percent, an annual report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows Michigan’s annual unemployment rate for all of 2020 to be 9.9% and a reflection of the economic damage from the pandemic, particularly in its early months.
“The source of all labor market damage continues to be COVID-19,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “Increased vaccine distribution is promising, since the public health situation must improve for there to be a full economic recovery. When we completely return to ‘normal’ is still unknown.”
The data firm Womply reports that, nationally, 64% of movie theaters and other entertainment venues, 40% of bars and 34% of hair salons and beauty shops are closed.
And on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve reported that across the country, “overall conditions in the leisure and hospitality sector continued to be restrained by ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.”
The U.S. Senate could still vote this week on the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to extend assistance nationwide to businesses and individuals that includes another $1,400 in stimulus payments and extended jobless benefits.