The number of Americans applying for unemployment aid is increasing, marking the first increase in months as coronavirus it extends throughout the nation.
About 1.4 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in the week ending July 18, adjusting for seasonal variations, the Labor Department said Thursday. It is an increase compared to the previous week, when 1.3 million were applied.
Another 975,000 people applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a new federal program for self-employed and contract workers. That number increased by 20,000 from the previous week.
This marks the 17th week in a row that total jobless claims have exceeded 2 million. But regular jobless claims had been declining since the last week of March, when they peaked at 6.6 million, until last week’s increase from 1.3 million to 1.4 million.
“The 15 consecutive weeks of declines in initial US claims from record levels have ended,” Jennifer Lee, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets Economics, wrote in a note. “But since the resurgence in the number of COVID-19 cases in some parts of the country has led to a reversal of the restrictions, this was to be expected.”
The biggest leaps in unemployment claims were in Florida, Georgia, California, Washington and Indiana, states that have seen a sharp increase in the number of COVID-19 cases.
“The risk of repeated business closings is that temporary job losses will become permanent. This could result in an even slower rate of recovery,” wrote Rubeela Farooqi, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics, in a note.
The total number of people receiving unemployment benefits through all state and federal programs decreased slightly, to 31.8 million, in the first week of July. That represents about 1 in 5 people in the workforce.
The latest series of layoffs is happening just before a weekly temporary payment of $ 600 in federal aid for the unemployed is configured to expire at the end of this week. Members of Congress are negotiating another aid package that could extend that benefit, although probably at a lower payment level.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
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