by Thomas Catenacci
The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims decreased to 779,000 last week as the economy continued to suffer the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) figure released Thursday represented a decrease in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending Jan. 23, in which there were 847,000 new jobless claims reported. Roughly 17.8 million Americans continue to collect unemployment benefits, according to the BLS report Thursday.
Economists expected Thursday’s jobless claims number to come in around 830,000, The Wall Street Journal reported. New jobless claims fell below 1 million in the first week of August, which was the first time the weekly claims had fallen below 1 million since March.
“I think this winter is going to be particularly tough on the job market,” Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, told the WSJ. “The path of the economy is tied to the hip of the pandemic.”
President Joe Biden inherited an economy that has been sluggish in recent weeks and months. The U.S. lost 140,000 jobs in December, marking the first jobs loss since April, according to the Department of Labor data released Jan. 8.
The economy shrank 3.5% in 2020, according to a Jan. 28 Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) report, the worst performance since the 1940s. The U.S. also recorded its sharpest rise in poverty since the 1960s when the poverty rate spiked to 11.8% in December.
Meanwhile, stocks have stayed elevated since Biden was sworn into office and Democrats became the majority party in Congress. Investors were optimistic about Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion relief bill, which includes $2,000 direct payments to Americans and an additional $400 in unemployment pay per week.
“Neither the president-elect, nor I, propose this relief package without an appreciation for the country’s debt burden,” Janet Yellen, Biden’s pick to lead the Treasury Department, said during her confirmation hearing. “But right now, with interest rates at historic lows, the smartest thing we can do is act big.”
Jobless claims hovered around 200,000 per week before the pandemic, according to The WSJ. Former President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in March as coronavirus spread rapidly around the world.
Average coronavirus cases and deaths per million have started to decline in the last month, according to The COVID Tracking Project. On Wednesday, the U.S. reported 3,685 new coronavirus-related deaths and 116,960 new cases while 91,440 Americans remained hospitalized from the virus.
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Thomas Catenacci is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
