Filings for unemployment insurance claims totaled 1.877 million last week in a sign both that the worst is over for the coronavirus-related jobs crisis but that the level of unemployment remains stubbornly high.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for 1.775 million new claims. The total nevertheless represented a decline from the previous week’s upwardly revised total of 2.126 million. Filings under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program totaled 623,073.
Continuing claims, which provide a clearer picture of how many Americans remain unemployed, totaled 21.5 million, a gain of 649,000 over the past week, also worse than Wall Street expected.
As states begin to reopen after being almost completely shut down for the better part of three months, so have signs grown for an economic crisis likely to drive the unemployment rate to about 20% for May.
The most recent data point was the private payrolls report Wednesday from ADP, which showed a decrease of 2.76 million in May. While that remains far higher than anything the U.S. economy saw in the pre-coronavirus era, it was well off Wall Street expectations of an 8.75 million decline.
That led Moody’s Analytics economist Mark Zandi to declare that “the Covid-19 recession is over.” Moody’s assists ADP in putting together the monthly private payrolls report. “That would make it the shortest recession in history,” Zandi said. “It will very likely be among the most severe.”
Some economists have been focusing more on the jobless claims number not adjusted for seasonal factors, which are less in play with the unusual nature of the coronavirus-related layoffs.
That number totaled 1.603 million, a plunge of 314,604 from the previous week.
At the state level,
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