Low Number of US Jobless Claims Confirm American Economy is Recovering

By Yehudit Garmaise

“America is on the move again,” said President Joe Biden, after he announced that the average number of jobless claims throughout the last four weeks is at the lowest it has been since 1969.

“When I took office, more than 18 million [Americans] were receiving unemployment benefits,” the president said. “Today, only 2 million are.”

Although the US labor market does appear to be rebounding robustly from last year’s COVID recession, the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits did rise by 18,000 last week to 206,000, which is still low, by historical standards and could just reflect week-to-week volatility.

The rollout of three different vaccines late last year is what most helped the American economy by reinvigorating consumer spending by giving Americans, many of whom were stuck at home for months, the confidence, security, and freedom to shop in stores, travel, and go to restaurants and other public places.

The US Department of Labor uses the number of weekly claims of joblessness to gauge the country’s layoffs, which have fallen steadily most of the year since one week in early January when 900,000 Americans lost their jobs in one week.

Now, jobless claims have decreased to below the 220,000-a-week level that was typical before the coronavirus pandemic decimated the U.S. economy in March 2020, when COVID-19 forced both businesses and consumers to stay home to prevent infection with the virus.

In March and April last year, employers let go a staggering 22.4 million Americans, 18.5 million of which have been rehired since April. The economy, however, is still 3.9 million jobs short of where it stood in February 2020.

Employers added 210,000 jobs last month, according to the Department of Labor’s November jobs report, which also showed that the unemployment rate dropped to a pandemic low of 4.2%, which was down from 4.6% in October when employers created countless opportunities by posting a near-record 11 million job openings.

photo: flickr