New job losses persist at 1.5M

Illinois unemployment claims rise slightly after weeks of decline from peak of pandemic’s impact

Chicago’s normally bustling Daley Plaza stands almost vacant late one morning last week. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

By Ted Cox

Job losses remained stubbornly high in the latest unemployment figures released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor.

For the third straight week, the department reported about 1.5 million new claims. The 1,480,000 who filed for benefits last week was down 60,000 from the revised 1,540,000 who filed the week before. Initial figures last week were 58,000 lower than the week before nationally. Department data set the four-week average for new claims at just over 1.6 million.

After a long line of weekly declines going back to the peak of the economic collapse stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic in late March, Illinois saw claims tick up slightly from 44,694 last week to 46,005. Claims for expanded federal benefits for so-called gig workers under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program also rose slightly, from 8,987 last week to 10,820.

Although rehiring actually lowered the U.S. unemployment rate in May to 13.3 percent, persistent job losses have been blamed for a new decline in the stock markets, along with rising COVID-19 cases in almost half the states, especially along the Sun Belt from South Carolina and Florida through Texas and Arizona.

An estimated 47 million people have filed for unemployment in the 14 weeks since the pandemic took hold and the economy shut down over efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 — well over a million every week, with a new record 6.9 million set the last week of March, where the previous one-week high for new claims was 695,000 set during the 1982 recession.

According to the Labor Department, the total number of idled U.S. workers claiming benefits of any kind stood at 30.6 million as of June 6, up 1.3 million from the week before. A year ago, just 1.5 million people were on employment nationwide.

The department reported, “The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 12.3 percent during the week ending June 13, a decrease of 0.3 percentage point from the prior week.”

The Illinois Department of Employment Security set the state unemployment rate for May at 15.2 percent, down 2 full percentage points from April, as nonfarm payrolls added 62,000 jobs statewide. But that was still almost 2 percentage points above the national unemployment rate of 13.3 percent for the month.