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The number of Americans newly seeking jobless benefits fell to a fresh pandemic-era low last week despite concerns over the surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the Delta variant, the feds said Thursday.
Initial filings for unemployment benefits, seen as a proxy for layoffs, fell to 340,000 last week, down 14,000 from the prior week’s revised level of 354,000, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected to see weekly new claims drop to a new pandemic-era low of 345,000.
Weekly new claims have fallen substantially from the 2020 peak of about 6.1 million new claims in a single week, but economists have expressed concern that in recent weeks, they appear to have settled at an elevated level.
Since the beginning of June, the number of weekly new claims has vacillated in a range between around 350,000 and 424,000.
The country was averaging just over 200,000 new claims per week in 2019.
More than 2.7 million Americans remained on traditional state unemployment benefits, the feds added.
Continuing claims fell by 160,000 from the prior week’s revised level, according to the new data. That figure stood at more than 13 million at the same time last year, in the thick of the pandemic.
Those claims have fallen significantly since peaks seen in 2020, but the figure remains about twice as high as pre-pandemic levels.
The latest data comes one day ahead of the highly anticipated August jobs report, which is slated to be released Friday morning. That report will show how many total jobs were added in the month.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expect to see 720,000 jobs added in August, down from 943,000 jobs added in July.
On Wednesday, data from payroll processing firm ADP showed that US companies added far fewer jobs in August than expected, but that report has recently often diverged with the federal government’s jobs report.
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