First-Time Jobless Claims Rise to 770,000 Over the Last Week
What Happened:
According to a report released by the Labor Department on Thursday, 770,000 more Americans claimed first-time jobless benefits over the last week, an increase of 45,000 from the previous week. The four-week average of jobless claims dropped to 746,000, the lowest since November, 2020.
Despite the slight increase over this last week, with the decline in confirmed coronavirus cases, the passage of Biden's Covid-19 Relief Bill and a job market that has been slowly strengthening, economists are hopeful that the economy is recovering.
On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the economic outlook for the next two to three years is still "highly uncertain" and that the Fed intends to keep its interest rate near zero through 2023.
Continued jobless claims remained at 4.1 million (down only 18,000 from the previous week), however, claims for programs for people no longer eligible for regular state unemployment claims, such as the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, continue to be high.
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