New jobless claims rise again
As retail sales fall, how long will Congress continue to hold out on COVID relief?
More U.S. workers continued to lose their jobs last week. Nine months into the pandemic, new weekly claims for unemployment have never returned to even the pre-COVID record. (Shutterstock)
By Ted Cox
New jobless claims rose again last week as Congress continued to dither over another coronavirus relief package.
The U.S. Labor Department’s weekly unemployment report released Thursday found that, adjusted for the usual seasonal fluctuations, claims filed by newly idled workers rose to 885,000, up 23,000 from the week before, which saw a new spike in filings.
It was the largest number of new jobless claims in three months. In the nine months since the coronavirus pandemic was declared, new weekly claims have never dropped to the pre-COVID record of 695,000 in a week set during the 1982 recession since setting a new record of 6.9 million new claims the last full week of March.
That news all comes a day after the U.S. Commerce Department reported that seasonally adjusted retail sales dropped 1.1 percent in November, just as the holiday shopping season was expected to kick in. The Associated Press reported that “Black Friday was also a bust,” with half as many shoppers in stores on the day after Thanksgiving as last year.
The need for additional COVID-19 relief appears abundantly clear, as Congress continues to debate a new package reportedly worth $900 billion. That deal is said to include extended unemployment insurance with an additional $300 a week in benefits, as well as $600 stimulus checks sent to most U.S. citizens. But both those figures were half the amounts issued in the original CARES Act coronavirus relief package early in the year. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent, called the bill “good, but it’s not enough,” labeling those figures “much too low.”
Otherwise, extended unemployment insurance and expanded benefits for independent contractors, freelancers, and so-called gig workers under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program were set to expire the day after Christmas, the last full week of the year.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin bemoaned how $160 billion in aid to states and local governments was left on the cutting-room floor in negotiations, calling that “heartbreaking.” Just this week, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the rejection of COVID relief to state and local governments “absolutely unacceptable.”
In raw unemployment figures released Thursday, the Labor Department reported that total claims actually declined slightly last week to 935,000, down 21,000 from the week before. But seasonal factors had suggested a drop of 45,000 week to week, with the usual holiday hiring, and that came after the number of new claims for benefits jumped 230,000 the week before.
The department set the total number of idled workers drawing on unemployment insurance at 20.6 million, up 1.6 million from the week before. That increase, however, was almost equal to the 1.8 million workers total on unemployment a year ago.