Weekly unemployment claims fell far more than expected last week, as the labor market recovery took a stride forward even as harsh winter weather compounded with the coronavirus pandemic over the past several weeks.
The Department of Labor released its weekly report on new jobless claims Thursday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Here were the main metrics from the report, compared to consensus data compiled by Bloomberg:
Initial jobless claims, week ended February 20: 730,000 vs. 825,000 expected and revised 841,000 during prior week
Continuing claims, week ended February 13: 4.419 million vs. 4.460 million expected and revised 4.520 million during prior week
Initial unemployment claims fell first time in five weeks for the period ending Feb. 20, and broke below 800,000 for the first time in seven weeks. But even the bigger than expected drop left claims well above their pre-pandemic levels, when claims were coming in at an average of just over 200,000 per week.
The decline last week did bring down the four-week moving average for new claims, however. This fell to 807,750, for a decrease of 20,500 from the prior week.
The vast majority of U.S. states reported decreases in new claims last week, helping contribute to the overall improvement. California posted by far the largest drop of 50,000 new claims on an unadjusted basis, followed by Ohio with a drop of 46,000 new claims. These more than offset notable increases in new claims in states including Illinois at 12,500, and Missouri at 4,200.
Continuing jobless claims, which are reported on a one-week lag and measure the total number of individuals still receiving regular state unemployment benefits, have fallen for the past six consecutive weeks. However, these also remain more than double their pre-pandemic levels, even as more and more Americans have exhausted their six months of continuing state benefits and rolled onto longer-term federal unemployment programs.
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