New Unemployment Claims Drop For Third Consecutive Week

New jobless claims dropped to new lows for the third consecutive week as coronavirus cases continue falling and vaccine rollout gains momentum.

Initial unemployment claims dropped 42,000 to 712,000 from the previous week’s revised level, which was revised up by 9,000 to 754,000, according to the weekly report from the Department of Labor on Thursday (March 11). The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs was down 6.2 percent to 709,458 in the week ending March 6.

“The pieces are falling into place for a more substantial improvement in the labor market,” Sarah House, a senior economist at Wells Fargo, told The New York Times.  

The new numbers are better than market forecasts of 725,000 new jobless claims, the lowest since the first week of November, according to Trading Economics.

New claims are dropping to encouraging lows since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a worldwide health emergency exactly one year ago Thursday. Filings are still above any other point in U.S. history, even topping the Great Recession high of 665,000 weekly claims in March 2009.

“We think that the vaccine rollout and downward trend for new COVID-19 cases should allow economic activity to keep picking up over time and that this will result in a downward trend for jobless claims filings through the volatility in the weekly series,” J.P. Morgan economist Bruce Kasman wrote in a recent note, per Yahoo Finance.

The Feb. 4 report from the Labor Department marked the first time new jobless claims fell below 900,000 for the second week in a row during the pandemic.