U.S. new weekly jobless claims unexpectedly rose last week even amid a wave of abating social distancing restrictions and improving weather.
The Department of Labor released its weekly report on new jobless claims on Thursday, and here are the main metrics from the report, compared to consensus data compiled by Bloomberg:
Initial jobless claims, week ended March 13: 770,000 vs. 700,000 expected, and an upwardly revised 725,000 during the prior week
Continuing claims, week ended March 6: 4.1 million vs. 4 million expected, and 4.1 million during the prior week
Though initial unemployment claims held below 800,000 for a fourth consecutive week, they unexpectedly rose by 45,000, whereas consensus economists had anticipated new claims to fall to a fresh pandemic-era low of 700,000. Initial jobless claims remain well above the Great Recession-era high of 665,000 from 2009. And new claims still need to fall significantly further to return to 2019 levels, when new claims averaged just over 200,000 per week.
Click here to read the full story from Emily McCormick at Yahoo Finance.
Still, the generally downward trend in new jobless claims over the past several months has pointed to an economy on the upswing, even as temporary factors like harsh winter weather generated some noise in the recent data.
