New jobless claims fall to pandemic low despite Delta variant concerns

The number of Americans newly seeking jobless benefits fell last week to a fresh pandemic low as the labor market continued to recover — despite fresh concerns over the surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the Delta variant of the coronavirus, the feds said Thursday.

Initial filings for unemployment benefits, seen as a proxy for layoffs, reached 348,000 last week, down 29,000 from the prior week’s revised level of 377,000, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected to see weekly new claims fall to 365,000.

It’s the fourth straight week the figure has declined.

Weekly new claims have fallen substantially from the 2020 peak of about 6.1 million new claims in a single week, but economists have expressed concern that in recent weeks, they appear to have settled at an elevated level.

Since the beginning of June, the number of weekly new claims has vacillated in a range between 368,000 and 424,000.

The country was averaging just over 200,000 new claims per week in 2019.

More than 2.8 million Americans remained on traditional state unemployment benefits, the feds added.

Continuing claims fell by 79,000 from the prior week’s revised level of 2.89 million, according to the new data. That figure stood at almost 14 million at the same time last year, in the thick of the pandemic.