Another 1.5M seek jobless claims
WASHINGTON — About 1.5 million laid-off workers applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week, evidence that many Americans are still losing their jobs even as the economy appears to be slowly recovering with more businesses partially reopening.
The latest figure from the Labor Department marked the 10th straight weekly decline in applications for jobless aid since they peaked in mid-March when the coronavirus hit hard.
In Massachusetts, 44,660 individuals filed initial claims for unemployment, an increase of 17,626 over the previous week. Since March 15, a total of 968,899 initial claims have been filed for aid.
The total number of people who are receiving unemployment aid fell slightly in the U.S., a sign that some people who were laid off when restaurants, retail chains and small businesses suddenly shut down have been recalled to work.
The figures are “consistent with a labor market that has begun what will be a slow and difficult healing process,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, an economist at Oxford Economics. “Still, initial jobless claims remain at levels that at the start of the year might have seemed unthinkable.”
Last week’s jobs report showed that employers added 2.5 million jobs in May, an unexpected increase that suggested that the job market has bottomed out.
But the recovery has begun slowly. Though the unemployment rate unexpectedly declined from 14.7%, it is still a high 13.3%. And even with the May hiring gain, just one in nine jobs that were lost in
March and April have returned. Nearly 21 million people are officially classified as unemployed.
Thursday’s report also shows that an additional 706,000 people applied for jobless benefits last week under a new program for self-employed and gig workers that made them eligible for aid for the first time. Of that total, 20,991 came from Massachusetts.