The amount of Americans filing unemployment claims has increased to 351,000 in the past week as the economy keeps recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The numbers put out Thursday show an increase in the amount of new unemployment claims when compared to the week of Sept. 11th, when 335,000 new unemployment claims were announced. That number was changed from the 332,000 claims initially announced last week.
Unemployment claims were thought to decline to 320,000, as reported by a Dow estimate, CNBC said.
“What we are seeing is an employment market that is getting better but we are still dealing with higher levels of unemployment,” Gus Faucher, a PNC Economist said to The WSJ.
Previously this month, the United States reported that 310,000 claims for the week of Sept. 6, the lowest amount of weekly jobless claims after 256,000 were announced in March 2020.
There were usually around 200,000-235,000 unemployment claims reported before the covid-related restrictions on activity that shut down the economy in 2020, according to Labor Dept. data. New claims increased to an all-time high of around 6.1 million in April of last year.
Around 11.3 million Americans are still getting unemployment benefits, Thursday’s report revealed.
“Despite the continuing impact of the delta variant, there is evidence the Biden plan is succeeding, we are getting real results, and the economy is moving again,” President Biden stated in September 9 comments on the economic recovery.
“We still have a lot of work to create a great economy from the bottom up and from the middle out, but Americans can now be confident with our strategy,” he said.
Meanwhile, Democrats are rushing to pass both a huge $3.5 trillion bill that would skyrocket the national debt ceiling, which is the amount that the government is allowed to borrow. If Washington fails to increase this limit, the economy might face a large downturn, six former U.S. Treasury secretaries said in a letter on Wednesday.
Author: Scott Dowdy
