Unemployment claims for the first time fell sharply last week amid signs that employment has risen in the US economy, the Labor Department said on Thursday.
Applications totaled 684,000 for the week ended March 20, the first time the number was below 700,000 in the Covid-19 era. The level was a substantial decline from 781,000 a week ago and was the lowest since March 14, 2020, just as the pandemic began.
Economists surveyed by the Dow Jones expected the claims to reach 735,000.
A separate version on Thursday morning showed that gross domestic product was stronger than expected in the fourth quarter. The third and final reading of GDP showed a gain of 4.3%, up from previous estimates and the Wall Street consensus of 4.1%.
However, policy makers have been looking more closely at job data to find clues about the direction of the economy.
Last week’s progress showed that the job market is gaining more and more on the back of an aggressive government stimulus and a vaccination program that sees nearly 2.5 million Americans a day taking pictures to stop the spread of Covid-19 .
The most recent total of weekly claims also marks the first time the total is lower than the pre-pandemic record of 695,000 hits in early October 1982.
In addition to the decrease in the number of weekly damages, the continuous damages, which have a week ago, decreased to 3.87 million, a decrease of 264,000.
The total number of those who benefited increased to almost 19 million, although the data is two weeks behind the number of damages. A steady decline in those receiving assistance under special programs during the pandemic will likely reduce the total in the coming weeks.
Wall Street continued to show a lower opening, despite better-than-expected job news.
While the total number of claims remains high at historical standards, the employment situation is significantly better than it was a year ago.
For the week ending March 21, 2020, claims totaled 3.3 million and would explode further to nearly 6.9 million a week later, as companies laid off workers amid a government-ordered eruption across the country. the country.
Weekly claims would not fall below 1 million by the end of August, and 22.4 million workers would lose their jobs in March and April alone. Almost 13 million of these jobs have been recovered since then.
Despite the stronger job picture, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on Thursday that the central bank will continue its aggressive policies to keep growth on the rise.
“We will do very, very gradually over time and with great transparency, when the economy has recovered almost completely, we will withdraw the support we offered in times of emergency,” Powell told NPR this morning.