Unemployment claims in the States have shot through the roof once again since the recovery in the job market has already hit a bump. Close to 853,000 Americans have already filed for unemployment benefits for the first time- which they did the previous week. The Labor Department has already mentioned that the number of claims has been the most ever since September. Interestingly, the initial unemployment claims ranged to 950,000. The initial claims of unemployment had already raised themselves in the week prior to this- which marks the increase for the third time in four weeks. The decline that took place last week came along with the holidays.
Daniel Zhao, the senior economist at Glassdoor mentioned that the initial claim surge was quite concerning. For, the number of unemployment claims, in the beginning, was way above the levels of the Great Recession. Also, close to 427,609 workers had already filed several claims under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program- one which was designed to specifically assist people who were self-employed. Incidentally, this number never gets adjusted for seasonality.
Unemployment claims remain high
The unemployment claims continued- as it involved workers who had already filed for the unemployment benefits for close to two consecutive weeks. The number went all the way up to 5.8 million- along with a few adjustments on a seasonal basis- as the week ended on the 28th of November. According to experts, this was the first increase that took place in its continued claims.
Most economists have always been looking very closely at jobless claims- since they believe that the decline could be the result of them rolling onto several other programs. It needs to be mentioned that the number of people depending on the program went all the way to 4.5 million for the third week. But the US Government Accountability Office has mentioned that it didn’t have a proper estimate of how many people were signing up for unemployment claims.
