Jobless claims remain above pre-COVID record
Filings in Illinois edge downward, but Fed chairman says we’re a long way from full employment
Closings and job losses persist at levels unheard of before the COVID-19 pandemic. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
New jobless claims remained stubbornly above the pre-COVID record Thursday, with 860,000 newly idled workers filing for benefits across the nation.
The U.S. Labor Department released its weekly unemployment report Thursday, finding that new claims persisted at levels unheard of before the coronavirus pandemic. The 860,000 who filed last week was down 33,000 from the previous week, but that week’s figures were revised up, so that an apparent leveling off was instead a one-week increase to 890,000 after 880,000 filed for benefits the week before. New claims briefly surged back up over 1 million in August after months of slow decline leading back to the record 6.9 million who filed the last full week of March, but filings have now leveled off in the mid-800,000s.
Keep in mind, the previous record for claims filed in a single week before COVID-19 afflicted the economy was 695,000, set during the 1982 recession.
Illinois continued to see a slow but steady drop in weekly filings, both for conventional unemployment insurance and for expanded federal benefits for independent contractors, freelancers, and so-called gig workers. Illinois claims fluttered down to 23,000 from 25,000 the week before, after 24,000 and 26,000 newly idled workers filed the benefits the two weeks before that. Claims for expanded benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program trickled down below 4,000 to 3,869, after being 4,100 the week before and a steady 4,400 the two weeks before that.
The Labor Department reported: “The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending August 29 was 29,768,326, an increase of 98,456 from the previous week.” By contrast, there were 1.5 million people on unemployment of any kind nationally for the same week a year ago.
That has dimmed hopes for a more robust recovery from the economic collapse after COVID-19 gripped the U.S. economy in March. The weekly labor report added: “The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 8.4 percent during the week ending Sept. 5, a decrease of 0.7 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 12,321,395, a decrease of 1,034,052 (or -7.7 percent) from the preceding week.” Even so, CNN reported that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters on Wednesday: “That just tells you that the labor market has improved, but that it's a long way from maximum employment.”