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Business

US workers file 861,000 jobless claims as COVID-19 cases drop

By
Noah Manskar
Published Feb. 18, 2021
Updated Feb. 25, 2021, 9:53 a.m. ET

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell further than expected last week but remained at historic highs as the coronavirus crisis continued.

Last week’s 730,000 initial jobless claims brought the total for the COVID-19 pandemic to about 79.6 million — a number equivalent to nearly half of the American workforce.

The latest batch of filings was the smallest since the last week of November and shrank from the prior week’s revised total of 841,000, beating economists’ expectations for 835,000 filings, according to Thursday’s US Department of Labor report.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic curve has begun to flatten and more vaccines become available, the hope is that we may now more substantially lift the employment curve,” Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick said.

But new claims have remained above the pre-COVID record of 695,000 for 49 consecutive weeks — a sign that the job market is struggling to bounce back as the global pandemic approaches its first anniversary.

While the latest numbers show joblessness gradually improving, experts said they may be painting an overly rosy picture of the labor market following the massive winter storm that walloped Texas and other southern states last week.

Last week’s sharp drop “overstates the magnitude of improvement, given that inclement weather and power outages affected large areas of the country and many Americans were not able to claim benefits, although the impact should be small and dissipate fairly quickly,” Bloomberg economist Eliza Winger said.

In all, American workers claimed more than 19 million weeks’ worth of state and federal unemployment aid in the week ending Feb. 6, the most recent for which figures are available. Millions of people are still relying on federal pandemic benefits that will expire in mid-March unless Congress acts.

“Historically, improvements in economy-wide conditions take months to translate into tangible improvements in the lives of working people — meaning that we can expect unemployment claims to stay elevated, even as we make our way out of the thralls of the pandemic,” said Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank.

The latest jobless data came a week ahead of the feds’ monthly employment report for February. It’s expected to show the US economy adding 100,000 jobs this month, up from January’s gain of 49,000, according to Wrightson ICAP.