Initial Jobless Claims went back up last week, crossing the 700K mark many thought we’d left behind and up from the 675K analysts were expecting. It’s also up 62K from the previous week’s 657K, though this figure was drastically reduced on this week’s revision, from the 684K originally reported. Thus, it makes this week-over-week spike pointier, but averaged out more or less as expected.
Continuing Claims were again lower than the previous week — 3.79 million versus the downwardly revised 3.84 million — and a steady (if plateauing) reduction week over week since the start of 2021. One key note which makes both Initial and Continuing Claims look better: Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), which had been absorbing more and more unemployed citizens every week, fell 400K in this latest read. This is a good development for the labor force overall.
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