Jobless claims steady in Michigan, but rise nationally

New Michigan jobless claims remained relatively stable last week even as they spiked higher in states where coronavirus cases are rising and more businesses are laying off workers to fight the virus.

Michigan reported 23,553 new jobless claims for the week ending Jan. 9, down slightly from the 30,456 new claims the week before, according to numbers released Thursday by the U.S. Dept. of Labor.

New jobless claims nationally soared to 965,000, the most since last August and considerably higher than analysts had projected.

Continuing jobless claims reported lag new claims by a week. In Michigan, continuing claims were 190,511 for the week ending Jan. 2, down slightly from 205,132 reported the week before.

The Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency announced it has begun sending out extra federal $300 a week benefits approved by Congress in a $900 billion relief package passed in December.

Those extra payments

will go out until March 13, barring additional relief from Congress, and are paid to workers receiving regular state unemployment benefits or extended benefits as part of the regular unemployment certification process.

Economists say that once coronavirus vaccines are more widely distributed, a broader recovery should take hold in the second half of the year. The incoming Biden administration, along with a now fully Democratic-led House and Senate, is also expected to push more rescue aid and spending measures that could accelerate growth. Yet many analysts also worry that with millions of Americans still unemployed and as many as one in six small companies going out of business, people who have been hurt most by the downturn won’t likely benefit from a recovery anytime soon.

“While prospects for the economy later in 2021 are upbeat, the labor market recovery has taken a step backward,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, an economist at Oxford Economics, “and we expect claims to remain elevated, with the risk that they rise from last week’s levels.”

A government report Tuesday showed that employers advertised fewer open jobs in November than in October. The decline, while small, was widespread across most industries. Even now, the nation has nearly 10 million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic sent the economy into a deep recession nearly a year ago, having recovered just 56% of the jobs lost in the spring.

In Michigan, the number of continuing jobless claims in the state system remains about three times the pre-pandemic levels of last February.

Michigan is moving to open up some indoor dining as virus cases decline, unlike in other parts of the country.