For another week, claims were nearly four times higher than the same period last year, before the pandemic brought the nation to a halt. This further underlines that the job recovery is not in good shape as we have been almost a year since the pandemic hit the US.
Still, it was a significant decrease in claims from the previous week and the first drop below 800,000 since the beginning of the month. Last week’s claims figure was reduced to 812,000, still several times the number in the same period last year,
In addition to regular unemployment benefits, 348,912 workers have applied for pandemic unemployment assistance, which is available to people such as the self-employed or handyman.
When added together, 1.2 million employees filed claims for benefits for the first time without adjusting for seasonal variations. It was a modest improvement from the week before, with about 78,200 fewer claims.
Ongoing claims, counting people who have applied for help for at least two consecutive weeks, totaled 4.6 million. That was a decrease of 4.8 million.
In fact, there were improvements in almost every benefit category. In total, 17.8 million Americans received some form of government assistance in the week ending January 16.
Only one category increased that week: federal employees and employees who received extensive benefits after maximizing other benefits available to them.