The number of jobless claims in the US last week remained unchanged, indicating a continuing loss of jobs.
This is evidenced by data from the US Department of Labor, released on Thursday 10 September.
For the period from August 31 to September 5, the number of initial applications was 884 thousand, as it was a week earlier. At the same time, the total number of Americans applying for permanent unemployment assistance rose to 13.4 million.
These statistics were worse than economists predicted in a Bloomberg survey. Experts expected that the number of initial applications would drop to 850,000 and the number of permanent applications to 12.9 million. In comparison, before the Coronavirus pandemic, these figures were 212,000 and 1.7 million per week respectively.
“It is particularly worrying that the rate of layoffs has not slowed down more significantly, even though the economy has reopened more fully and more and more businesses have returned”, – commented Rubila Farouki, Chief Economist at High Frequency Economics.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that Congress cannot agree on a resumption of government support programmes and the temporary aid from Donald Trump has stopped. In addition, infection rates are increasing again in some parts of the country.