Another 709,000 file for first-time unemployment, permanent job losses continue to rise

Yahoo Finance's Myles Udland breaks down unemployment rate as permanent job losses continue to rise.

Another 709,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week, marking another modest improvement in the number of those newly unemployed even as coronavirus cases in the U.S. continue to creep higher.

The Department of Labor released its weekly report on new jobless claims Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. ET. Here were the main results from the report, compared to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg:

Initial jobless claims, week ended Nov. 7: 709,000 vs. 731,000 expected and a revised 757,000 during prior week

Continuing claims, week ended Oct. 31: 6.786 million vs. 6.825 million expected and a revised 7.222 million during prior week

The Labor Department report showed an eleventh straight week that new jobless claims totaled below 1 million. But new claims have not yet broken back below 700,000 since the start of the pandemic and have held sharply above levels from before the outbreak. Throughout 2019, new initial unemployment claims were coming in at an average of just over 200,000 per week.

Most U.S. states reported declines in unadjusted new claims last week, led by Georgia with a drop of more than 14,000 initial claims. States grappling with rising new COVID-19 cases including Texas, New Jersey, Kentucky and Florida also reported notable decreases in their numbers of new claims. Washington state, on the other hand, saw the biggest leap last week, with new claims rising by more than 10,000.

Meanwhile, continuing jobless claims, representing the total number of individuals still receiving state unemployment benefits, broke below 7 million for the first time since mid-March for the week ended Oct. 31.

Some of that decline, however, came not because individuals returned to work, but because they rolled off state unemployment benefits and onto longer-term federal programs. As of last week’s report, the number of Americans that joined the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which provides another several weeks of benefits, increased by another nearly 160,000. And across all programs, about 21.2 million Americans were still receiving some form of unemployment assistance.
For more on this article by Emily McCormick please visit:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news..../initial-jobless-cla

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