Americans Again File by the Millions for Unemployment Benefits

Millions more Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, indicating major job losses are continuing two months after the coronavirus pandemic started shuttering businesses.

Initial jobless claims for regular state programs totaled 2.44 million in the week ended May 16, Labor Department figures showed Thursday. The prior week’s figure was revised down by 294,000 to 2.69 million after a clerical error by Connecticut labor officials inflated the overall nationwide figure. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 2.4 million claims in the latest week.

Initial claims under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program -- which expands unemployment benefits to those not traditionally eligible, such the self-employed and gig workers -- totaled 2.23 million last week on an unadjusted basis.

Since efforts to the contain Covid-19 pandemic rapidly shut down the U.S. economy in mid-March, about 38.6 million initial unemployment insurance claims have been filed under state programs. That two-month total is roughly equivalent to all of the initial claims filed during the Great Recession.

Continuing claims -- the total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits -- increased to a record 25.1 million in state programs the week ended May 9. That sent the insured unemployment rate, or the number of people currently receiving unemployment insurance as a share of the total eligible labor market, to 17.2% for that period.

Those series are reported with a one-week lag. Economists are monitoring continuing claims to gauge the breadth of the recovery in the labor market as states begin to reopen their economies.

Continuing claims under the federal PUA program totaled 6.12 million as of May 2.