(Washington) Weekly jobless claims in the United States have started falling again after three weeks of increases, an encouraging sign that suggests a gradual exit from the pandemic and sustained economic growth.
Posted at 9:40 a.m.
From Jan. 16-22, 260,000 people registered as unemployed to receive benefits, according to Labor Department figures released Thursday.
This is 30,000 less than the previous week, for which registrations were revised slightly upwards (290,000 instead of the 286,000 initially announced).
The number of new listings is in line with analysts’ forecasts.
“With the decline in new cases of COVID-19 contamination, we expect registrations to continue to gravitate around 200,000 or even below, while the job market remains particularly tense”, commented in a note Nancy Vanden Houten of Oxford Economics.
The unemployment rate fell to 3.9% in December, approaching pre-pandemic levels.
Many American companies are struggling to recruit and are therefore reluctant to lay off, fearing that they will face a shortage of workers.
The four-week average of jobless claims is 247,000, up 15,000 from the previous week.
The total number of benefit recipients was 2.14 million as of January 8, according to the most recent data available, also released on Thursday.
This is a small increase, of just over 8,000 people, compared to the previous week, but the level remains well below the more than 19 million beneficiaries recorded last year at the same period.