New weekly jobless claims last week unexpectedly plunged to a new pandemic-era low.
The Department of Labor released its weekly report on new jobless claims on Thursday morning, and here are the main metrics from the report, compared to consensus data compiled by Bloomberg:
Initial jobless claims, week ended April 17: 547,000 vs. 610,000 expected, and a revised 586,000 during the prior week
Continuing claims, week ended April 3: 3.7 million vs. 3.6 million expected, and a revised 3.7 million during the prior week
Last week’s new claims came as another welcome surprise after more than a year of elevated initial filings. At 547,000, new claims broke below the Great Recession-era high of 665,000 filed in March 2009 for a second straight week. And claims have dropped precipitously from their all-time high of 6.1 million from last spring.
“This is precisely the kind of surprise we like to see, unlike the drumbeat of negative shocks that we experienced a year ago at this time,” Mark Hamrick, senior economist analyst at Bankrate, said in an email Thursday morning. “While a number of economic indicators have recently surprised in a positive way, the economy still requires substantial healing.”
But the labor market recovery has still been choppy, and the general downtrend in new jobless claims over the past several months has come with some bumps higher. Other reports have also underscored the stop-and-start nature of the rebound, with the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book last week noting that many regions continued to experience labor shortages as well as hiring challenges over the past several weeks.
Click here to see the full report from Emily McCormick at Yahoo Finance.
