US jobless claims drop to lowest level since mid-March 2020
By Alexander Bueso
Date: Monday 01 Nov 2021
(Sharecast News) - The number of Americans filing for unemployment claims continued to drop at the end of August.
According to the US Department of Labor, in seasonally adjusted terms, initial jobless claims fell by 14,000 during the week ending on 28 August to reach 340,000.
That was just as expected by economists at Barclays Research and marked the lowest level since 14 March 2020.
On a four-week moving average basis, which smooths out the volatility in the data from one week to the next, jobless claims declined by 11,750 to 355,000.
Secondary unemployment claims meanwhile, which are those not being filed for the first time and reference the week ending on 21 August, retreated by 160,000 to approximately 2.75m.
That too was the lowest tally since 14 March 2020, although back then they were at 1.77m.
Economists were a bit divided on the outlook for claims going forwards.
For her part, Nancy van den Houten at Oxford Economics said jobless claims were likely to continue on a downward path, although interruptions were possible if firms and employees turned more cautious on account of the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19.
She also noted the still very elevated levels of claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which increased by 6,000 to 3.8m, and for Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation by 408,000 to 5.4m, even though both programmes were set to expire at the end of the current week.
"We don't expect the end of emergency benefits to lead to an immediate jump in employment and in the near-term expect it will weigh more on personal income and spending."
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