The number of new jobless claims last week was 1.5 million, the Labor Department reported on Thursday.
Economists had predicted that 1.3 million people would claim unemployment benefits.
Thursday’s report shows claims decreased by 58,000 from the previous week, and it marks the 11th straight week that claims have declined since the peak of 6.9 million job losses in the week ending March 28.
The number of jobless workers receiving benefits is trending lower. There were 20.5 million people receiving benefits for the week ending June 6, which was lower than the prior week by 62,000.
Still, the number of people filing for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance last week increased to 760,000, from 694,000 the prior week. PUA is a special category of eligibility for self-employed workers or people seeking part-time work created by Congress in the March CARES Act relief bill.
The PUA is not included in the initial jobless claims, and if it were, there would have been over 2 million initial jobless claims last week.
“That suggests we are still dealing with more than 2 million new claims in the latest week,” said Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com.
Thursday’s jobless claims come as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday that the worst of the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus could nearly be over as businesses start to reopen across the country.
“We may be reaching a bottom on that now,” he told the Senate Banking Committee, but he cautioned that his projection is based on a second coronavirus wave not affecting the country.
“Let’s just assume that that doesn’t happen,” he said.
His remarks on an economic turnaround were bolstered by retail sales increasing 18% in May, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That figure is up from contractions of 14.7% in April and 8.3% in March.
As businesses reopen, Powell expects a large number of jobless workers will return to employment.
“That should result in a significant amount of jobs gains,” he said, adding that “our expectation, generally, and the expectation of other forecasters is that we will see unemployment decline and employment increase.”
The economy gained 2.5 million jobs in May, lowering the unemployment rate to 13.3%, from 14.7% in April.
