Another 745,000 Americans filed for initial unemployment benefits last week on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported Thursday. It was a slightly smaller number of claims than economists expected, but an increase from the week before.
In addition, 436,696 workers applied for pandemic unemployment benefits, which are available to people such as the self-employed or handyman.
Together, first job claims for unemployment totaled 1.2 million last week without seasonal adjustments.
Continuing benefit claims, counting claims submitted for at least two consecutive weeks, were 4.3 million in the week ending February 20, down from the week before.
To be sure, the labor crisis has improved a lot from almost a year ago, when weekly first-time benefits skyrocketed to 6.9 million and millions of jobs disappeared. Many peoplehave been able to return to work since then, but the labor market remains deeply in the hole.
Other labor market data this week was also sobering. ADP’s employment report showed that fewer jobs were added than expected in February: 117,000 versus the forecast of 177,000. While the private sector report and official government figures, due Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET, aren’t correlated, it’s not a good sign.
Economists predict that 182,000 jobs were added in February, up from 49,000 at the start of the year. If true, America would still cut 9.7 million jobs as of February 2020, when the unemployment rate was near its 50-year low of 3.5%.
But expectations vary widely, ranging from 100,000 jobs lost to 500,000 jobs gained, according to Refinitiv.
“We expect the US job recovery to show some encouraging progress in February,” said Lydia Boussour, US economist at Oxford Economics.
Improvements in health and economic conditions, along with the introduction of coronavirus vaccines and the reopening of the Paycheck Protection Program for businesses, will help create jobs, she said. Meanwhile, the winter storms that ravaged much of the country in February are expected to have a minor impact on the employment situation, Boussour said.
The unemployment rate, which does not fully include those who have had to drop out of the labor force, is expected to remain at 6.3%. Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the actual unemployment rate was likely closer to 10%.
