US weekly jobless claims stay above 1 million for a 2nd straight week as labor-market recovery stalls

AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

• New US jobless claims for the week that ended Saturday totaled 1 million, the Labor Department said Thursday. That matched the consensus economist estimate.
• Thursday's reading comes after a surprise increase in the week ended August 15 that pushed total claims back above 1 million.
• This week's report brought total filings over a 23-week period to more than 58 million.
• Continuing claims, which measure the sum of Americans receiving unemployment benefits, reached 14.5 for the week ended August 15. The reading is an increase from the prior week.
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More than 1 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment insurance last week as coronavirus fallout continued to hit the labor market.

New US weekly jobless claims totaled just over 1 million last week, the Labor Department announced Thursday. The reading matches the estimate from economists surveyed by Bloomberg and is roughly in line with the prior period.

Last week's figure comes after a surprise jump in claims the prior period that pushed them back above 1 million. Jobless claims have hovered at that level over the last few weeks as hiring failed to speed up.

In just a few months, the more than 58 million unemployment claims filed during the coronavirus pandemic have far surpassed the 37 million during the 18-month Great Recession. The latest figure is still far more than the 665,000 filed during the Great Recession's worst week.

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Continuing claims, which represent the aggregate total of people receiving unemployment benefits, came in at 14.5 million for the week that ended August 15, a slight decline from the prior period's revised number. The figure did, however, exceed economist forecasts.

Other high-frequency data releases have shown the US economic recovery sputtering out in recent weeks. Consumer confidence fell for a second straight month in August. Credit- and debit-card gauges show consumer spending slowing its growth through the month as fiscal stimulus dries up and Americans remain wary of COVID-19 hotspots.

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