Weekly unemployment insurance claims increased less than expected last week, but remained above pre-pandemic levels, while the US economy was trying to get rid of the impacts of Covid-19 and employers were waiting to see if the stimulus from $ 1.9 trillion from President Joe Biden would become law.
The Labor Department reported on Thursday that the first applications for unemployment insurance in the week ending March 6 totaled 712,000 seasonally adjusted, below the Dow Jones estimate of 725,000.
Requests for state unemployment benefits, seen as a substitute for layoffs, have declined in recent weeks, but remain steadily above pre-pandemic levels. The four-week moving average, which smooths out fluctuations in weekly numbers, was 759,000.
The pre-Covid record for candidates for the first time was 695,000.
Continued complaints declined again, dropping from 193,000 to 4.1 million, another low point in the pandemic era, in data that runs a week behind the number of headline complaints.
The latest Department of Labor report comes amid positive signs for the US economy.
This is largely due to the accelerated launch of Covid-19 vaccines and expectations that most Americans over 18 can be inoculated before the peak summer months.
“Again, this represents the lowest impression of the pandemic, as workers are slowly brought online,” wrote Ian Lyngen, fee strategist at BMO Capital Markets. “In the network, a solid reading on the labor market that maintains the trend of recovery as vaccines are administered and ambitious restrictions continue to be reversed.”
Employers created 379,000 jobs in February amid strong hiring in restaurants and bars, according to the department’s latest monthly job report, released on Friday. Meanwhile, the government’s stimulus helped boost household income and spending in January, when the US Treasury disbursed millions of payments of $ 600.
This favorable wind is virtually guaranteed to increase after President Joe Biden signs a $ 1.9 trillion aid package in law that will send a round of $ 1,400 checks to Americans and allocate billions to vaccine distribution efforts. .
The project, which is due to be signed on Friday, is expected to catapult the US economic growth rate to multi-year levels in late 2021. In addition to direct payments, the project includes an extension of $ 300 a week to aid- federal unemployment, an expansion of the tax credit for children for a year and $ 350 billion in aid to state, local and tribal governments.
Still, fixing the job market has been a slow factor in the broader economic picture. Although the unemployment rate fell from a high in the pandemic era from 14.8% last April to 6.2% in February, there are still huge gaps in employment.
There were about 10 million unemployed workers remaining until February, and the Department of Labor’s report on Thursday indicated that more than 20 million continued to receive some form of unemployment insurance until February 20.