The number of new applications for unemployment benefits were 860,000 last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, amid worrying signs that the hiring recovery has leveled off.
Forecasters had projected 850,000 new jobless claims.
The number of workers claiming unemployment benefits dropped precipitously through the end of May, but that decline stalled at the end of summer.
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 weekly claims for unemployment benefits skyrocketed in March, to as high as 6.9 million.
For comparison, jobless claims for the week ending Sept. 21, 2019, were 215,000. California alone had more claims than that for the week ending Sept. 12, 2020, with more than 230,000 claims before modifying for seasonal factors.
An additional 658,000 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 down from 868,000 the prior week. During the week ending Aug. 29, nearly 14.5 million people were receiving the benefits.
The number of jobless workers claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending Aug. 29 was nearly 30 million. There were roughly 1.4 million individuals claiming benefits for all programs for the comparable week in 2019.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday noted that many of those still looking for work come from industries severely hurt by the virus and could take a while for them to find employment.
“Some of these people will find it very hard to find work,” he said.
One bright spot in the labor report is states that recently had high infection rates of the virus have saw declines in jobless claims last week. These states include California, Texas, Florida, New York, and New Jersey.
