The number of new applications for unemployment benefits last week hovered at 884,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
Forecasters had projected 850,000 new jobless claims. Instead, they stayed at exactly the same level as the previous week.
An additional 838,000 workers applied for benefits through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program last week, which provides for unemployment insurance for people sidelined by the epidemic who normally wouldn’t be eligible for benefits, such as gig workers whose business dried up. The total is up from 747,000 the prior week. During the week ending Aug. 22, over 14.5 million people claimed the benefit in 48 states.
The total number of people claiming benefits from all programs of all durations for the week ending Aug. 22 was over 29 million, an increase of over 380,000. There were roughly 1.5 million people claiming these benefits in the comparable week in 2019.
New weekly claims are extremely high by historical standards. As the coronavirus hit the United States and the economy locked down to slow its spread, layoffs and thus jobless claims skyrocketed in March, with 6.9 million filing for benefits for the week ending March 28.
The number of workers claiming unemployment benefits dropped precipitously through the end of May but have hovered near a million in recent weeks.
The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending Aug. 29 were in California, 22,647, Texas, 4,521, and Louisiana 3,662.
The overall jobs situation is still dire. Weekly claims are still roughly four times higher than before the pandemic rocked the economy.
Still, the number of job openings in July surged to 6.6 million, the Labor Department reported on Wednesday, as work opportunities have rebounded since the pandemic hit the nation. Vacancies, though, still remain well off the pre-crisis trend.
In March, the month that the economy shut down to slow the spread of the virus, there were just over 6 million job openings. As the economy suffered through the shutdown, openings dropped to 4.9 million in April but started to increase as businesses began to reopen. In May, openings totaled 5.3 million, and in June, they were just above 6 million.
The Labor Department defines a job opening as a position that is available but not filed on the last business day of the month.
