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’s weekly report on new jobless claims, compared to consensus data compiled by Bloomberg, found:
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: 4.42 million vs. 4.46 million expected; and revised 4.520 million during prior week
Initial unemployment claims fell for the 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.
Click here to see the full report from Emily McCormick at Yahoo Finance.
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.
