The figure of 914,000 was revised up 14,000 from 900,000. The total number of continued weeks claimed for benefits in all programs for the week ending Jan. 9 was 18.3 million, an increase of 2.3 million from the previous week. There were 2.2 million weekly claims filed for benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2020.
Some 426,856 workers filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which is not seasonally adjusted. First-time claims were 1.3 million without seasonal adjustments.
“The level of initial claims is obviously still way too high, but we are only a few more months away from hopefully seeing a sharp drop as more service businesses reopen as we get vaccinated,” Peter Boockvar, CIO of Bleakley Advisory Group, said in a research note, per Yahoo Finance.
“Likely also keeping it high is another round of generous federal benefits, as the extra $300 allows about 50 percent of people collecting claims to make more than what they were earning while working,” Boockvar added.
Continued jobless claims dipped slightly to 4.8 million. Last year at this time jobless claims were roughly 200,000 each week, CNN reported.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said at a Wednesday press conference that the priority is getting people vaccinated against COVID-19. “There’s been a lot of adapting — but you can’t adapt hotels, sporting venues, movie theaters, restaurants, bars. That’s millions and millions of people,” Powell said, per CNN.
“And so you’re just going to have to defeat the pandemic. … That is really the main thing about the economy is getting the pandemic under control, getting everyone vaccinated, getting people wearing masks and all that,” he added. “That’s the single most important economic growth policy that we can have.”
Weekly jobless claims filings have been above the pre-pandemic peak of 695,000 since the coronavirus took hold in the U.S. in March 2020.
“The virus is in the driver’s seat — there’s no getting around it,” Daniel Zhao, senior economist and data scientist at Glassdoor, told The Wall Street Journal. “Until we control the pandemic, we can’t hope for a full recovery economically.”
New jobless claims for the week ending Jan. 21 were 926,000, and the total number of continued weeks claimed for benefits in all programs for the week ending Jan. 2 was 15.9 million, a decrease of 2.4 million from the previous week.
