With the labor market making a steady recovery from the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, weekly unemployment claims have dropped to their lowest levels since November 2020.
The U.S. Department of Labor is scheduled to release its latest job report on Thursday. The main takeaway of the report is the expected figure of 773,000 unemployment claims that were filed this past week, down 20,000 from the 793,000 of the previous week. As for continuous claims, the figure is expected to be approximately 4.4 million, compared to the 4.545 million of last week.
In addition to being the lowest amount of weekly unemployment claims since November, this proves to be the first time since that there have been less than 800,000 claims for back-to-back weeks.
While this is a positive downward shift, the latest unemployment claims numbers remain high above those prior to the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when unemployment claims remained approximately 200,000 per week.
Rubeela Farooqi, the chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, explained: “The message from the jobless claims data is consistent with a labor market that is slowly recovering but remains weak.”
Another important consideration is the end of government aid in mid-March. This highlights the need for the U.S. government to discuss the next phase of its plan for economic recovery.
