New York (CNN Business)For the ninth week in a row, millions of Americans filed for initial unemployment benefits. Even as the economy is beginning to reopen in parts of the country, layoffs and furloughs have taken hold of the US labor market.
Another 2.4 million Americans filed for first-time benefits last week on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Department of Labor reported on Thursday. In total, 38.6 million people have filed for initial unemployment aid since mid-March, when lockdowns began in full force across the country. That corresponds to 23.7% of the March US labor force.
Stripping out the seasonal adjustments, which had accounted for a slight increase from the previous week, the number of claims stood at 2.2 million last week.
In normal times, the seasonal adjustments help smooth out the data and provide a clearer picture. But in a crisis such as this one, adjustments can distort what’s really going on, said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute.
In a rare quirk, claims for the week before, which ended May 9, were revised down sharply — from nearly 3 million to 2.7 million. That’s welcome news, but it was expected because it was the result of a reporting error from Connecticut’s Labor Department, which substantially overreported the number of that state’s claims from the week prior.
Last week, Georgia overtook Kentucky as the state where the highest percentage of the March labor force — 39.3% — filed for initial jobless claims. In Kentucky, 38.5% of the work force has applied for initial unemployment aid.
Now for the (relatively) good news: First-time claims have declined for seven straight weeks. They peaked at 6.9 million in the final week of March.
Economists expect further declines in the coming weeks as states begin to reopen their economies. Still, the weekly claims are at historically highs. The four-week average now sits just above 3 million claims; in the years before the pandemic, the weekly unemployment numbers were around the 200,000 level.
Source: Another 2.4 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week
