New weekly jobless claims fell more than expected last week even as states reimposed stay-in-place restrictions throughout November amid a resurgence in COVID-19 cases.
The Department of Labor released its weekly report on new jobless claims Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. ET. Here were the main results from the report, compared to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg:
Initial jobless claims, week ended Nov. 28: 712,000 vs. 775,000 expected and an upwardly revised 787,000 during prior week
Continuing claims, week ended Nov. 21: 5.552 million vs. 5.8 million expected and an upwardly revised 6.089 million during prior week
Read more: What to do before you lose your job
The tempo of the labor market recovery has closely tracked the cadence of reopenings and closures across the country. New jobless claims began rising again in mid-November after a months’ worth of improvements, as the unchecked spread of the coronavirus spurred a wave of renewed lockdowns in many states. In November alone, new COVID-19 cases topped 4 million, more than doubling the record from October.
Still, new claims decreased by 75,000 last week, falling for the first time in three weeks. And even with the previous week’s upward revision, the four-week moving average for new jobless claims declined by 11,250 to 739,500 from last week’s average.
New claims have not yet broken below 700,000 since the start of the pandemic, though they have come down significantly from the pandemic-era high of nearly 7 million. Before the pandemic, new jobless claims were averaging around 220,000 per week.
Continuing jobless claims, which serve as a barometer for ongoing unemployment, fell to a fresh nine-month low of 5.52 million during the week ended November 21.
However, this metric has been pushed lower for months not just because individuals have returned to the workforce, but because others have exhausted state unemployment insurance and rolled onto longer-term federal unemployment benefits.
The number of Americans joining the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which offers an additional 13 weeks worth of benefits after individuals use up their allotted six months of continuing benefits, rose by nearly 60,000, according to the latest data.
But these additional federal unemployment programs are slated to expire by the end of the month, since they were authorized by Congress’s CARES Act back in the spring and have not been renewed as Congress continues to debate the size and scope of another stimulus package.
The lapse in these programs could leave millions of Americans without jobless benefits of any type starting early next year in absence of further stimulus.
“The rapid spread of the virus across the nation is making it harder to find employment this fall and this puts the entire economic recovery from recession in jeopardy if Congress can't get it together and vote on a new stimulus package before the end of the year,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist for MUFG Union Bank, said in an email Wednesday.
As of last week’s data, 20.2 million Americans were claiming unemployment benefits of some form.
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Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @emily_mcck
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