The number of new claims for unemployment for week ending 10/10/20 increased, which offset net declines of the preceding five weeks. New claims are 898K, a 53K increase over the revised tally for previous week of 845K.
Since 8/29/20 the new claims have been in the mid- to high 800 thousands. Change in the last six weeks, starting with 9/5/20 are +9K, -27K, +7K, -24K, -4K, +53K.
Keep in mind before the government induced shutdown of the economy new claims averaged about 220K per week so we are still running about four times the previous norm.
The number of continuing claims for unemployment is continuing to drop. I’m not sure why this is. Part is due to people going back to work. Part of it is people dropping off the state-level unemployment rolls after the 13 weeks of coverage.
On 10/15/20 the Wall Street Journal reports US Jobless Claims Rose to 898,000 Last Week. Article says continuing rounds of new layoffs are showing up in the numbers. Those layouts seem to be holding back the strength of the recovery
Tally of people who are now in the extended 13 weeks cover the federal level has risen from 1.8M to 2.0M to 2.8M in recent two weeks.
Still not reflected in the new claims tally is impact from the State of California having placed a pause on accepting new claims for two weeks.
Following graphs show the devastation from the economic shutdown.
New claims
New claims for unemployment by week since the start of the year:
Top of this post shows a graph looking closer at the new claims since 8/1/20.
Continuing claims
The number of people covered by unemployment insurance who are drawing checks is extremely high, but is continuing to slowly drop. This is labeled as the number of insured unemployed. Don’t know how to break out the cause for the tally dropping. Drop consists of people going back to work, transitioning to the federal program after exhausting 13 weeks of state coverage, and dropping out of the job market.
Here is a closer look at the continuing claims since 8/1/20:
Insured unemployment rate
The proportion of people who are covered by unemployment insurance who are unemployed is also included in the weekly report. As you can see the insured unemployment rate is continuing to drop.
Data source
Weekly press release from the Department of labor: Unemployment insurance weekly claims. At the end of the report you can find weekly data for this year.