US jobless claims rise after a five-week decline
WASHINGTON – The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose for the first time in five weeks even though the economy and job market have been recovering briskly from the coronavirus pandemic.
Jobless claims edged up by 4,000 to 353,000 from a pandemic low 349,000 a week earlier, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out weekto-week volatility, fell by 11,500 to 366,500 – lowest since mid-march 2020 when the coronavirus was beginning to slam the United States.
The weekly count has fallen more or less steadily since topping 900,000 in early January as the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has helped the economy – encouraging businesses to reopen or expand hours and luring consumers to restaurants, bars and shops.
“We expect jobless claims to remain on a downward path as the labor market continues to recover, but progress will be more fitful as claims get closer to prepandemic
levels,” economists Nancy Vanden Houten and Gregory Daco of Oxford Economics said.
A resurgence of cases linked to the highly contagious delta variant has also clouded the economic outlook. And claims already remain high by historic standards: Before the pandemic tore through the economy in March 2020, the weekly pace amounted to around 220,000 a week.
Filings for unemployment benefits have traditionally been seen as a realtime measure of the job market's health. But their reliability has deteriorated during the pandemic. In many states, the weekly figures have been inflated by fraud and by multiple filings from unemployed Americans as they navigate bureaucratic hurdles to try to obtain benefits.
The job market has been rebounding with vigor since the pandemic paralyzed economic activity last year and employers slashed more than 22 million jobs in March and April 2020. The United States has since recovered 16.7 million jobs. And employers have added a rising number of jobs for three straight months, including a robust 943,000 in July. They have been posting job openings – a record 10.1 million in June – faster than applicants are lining up to fill them.