New Unemployment Claims Miss Expectations, Stay Unchanged

The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims came in at 751,000 last week as the economy continues to suffer the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.

New jobless claims were unchanged compared to the week ending Oct. 24 in which there were also 751,000 new jobless claims reported, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday showed. New jobless claims have been below 800,000 for three consecutive weeks, according to CNBC.

Economists expected Thursday’s jobless claims number to come in around 741,000, CNBC reported. New jobless claims fell below 1 million in the first week of August, which was the first time the weekly claims had fallen below 1 million since March.

“As these last few weeks have shown us, the pandemic is not over,” Syracuse University economist Alfonso Flores-Lagunes told The Wall Street Journal.

Average coronavirus cases and deaths per million have been increasing steadily in the U.S. since mid-October, according to The COVID Tracking Project and The Financial Times.

Jobless claims hovered around 200,000 per week before the pandemic, according to WSJ. President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in March as coronavirus spread rapidly around the world.

The U.S. added 661,000 jobs in September, while unemployment fell to 7.9%, according to the Department of Labor data released Oct. 2. October’s unemployment report is set to be released Friday.

The U.S. economy surged by a record 33.1% in the third quarter.