New jobless claim fell to a fresh pandemic-era low of 498,000 last week

In This Article:

New weekly jobless claims set a new pandemic-era low last week, falling below 500,000 for the first time since March 2020, with initial filings trending decidedly lower in recent weeks amid the pick-up in economic activity.

The Department of Labor released its weekly report on new jobless claims Thursday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Here were the main metrics from the report, compared to consensus data compiled by Bloomberg:

  • Initial jobless claims, week ended May 1: 498,000 vs. 538,000 expected and a revised 590,000 during the prior week

  • Continuing claims, week ended April 24: 3.690 million vs. 3.620 million expected and a revised 3.653 million during the prior week

Consensus economists expected initial unemployment filings to hold below 600,000 for a fourth straight week, dipping to the lowest level since mid-March 2020. Thursday's print showed an even more marked decline.

Initial filings have slid over the course of the past year, pulling back sharply from a pandemic-era high of more than 6 million. New claims during the comparable week last year totaled nearly 3 million, but have held below 1 million since August 2020 as layoffs and other separations slowed.

The four-week moving average for new jobless claims fell by 61,000 to 560,000, declining to the lowest level since March 2020 even as the previous week's new claims total was upwardly revised.

But while new filings declined, an elevated number of Americans remained unemployed. Some pundits noted that this could be at least in part because of the ongoing federal unemployment programs that have been offering augmented unemployment benefits during the pandemic.

“We have to look at jobless claims in a different light than we usually do,” Sevens Report Research Founder Tom Essaye told Yahoo Finance on Thursday. “There is a portion of the workforce that won’t go back to work right now, frankly because they’re getting paid a decent amount of money to stay at home.”

More than 16 million Americans were still receiving unemployment benefits across all programs as of mid-April, for a decrease of nearly 1 million from the previous week. That included nearly 12 million Americans on the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which both expire in September. And based on the Labor Department's monthly non-farm payrolls report, the U.S. economy is still more than 8 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic levels from February 2020.

"With unemployment claims finally moving in the right direction after months of stagnation, there’s still a need for more improvement on the public health front," AnnElizabeth Konkel, Indeed Hiring Lab economist, said in an email on Thursday. "Only with more fully vaccinated individuals can a full economic recovery truly blossom. We haven’t crossed the finish line yet."