Economists were expecting 360,000 new jobless claims for the week
Jobless claims jumped last week against expectations as the US employment market is undergoing a recovery, the US Labor Department said on Thursday.
First-time requests for unemployment insurance reached 412,000, up by 37,000 from the week before. It is the highest number recorded since May 15.
CNBC reported that economists were expecting 360,000 new claims for the week, well below the recorded figure.
The rise came pretty much totally from Pennsylvania and California, which saw new claims of 21,590 and 15,712 respectively.
Th news draws attention the the fact that the US economy has not fully recovered, and that the jobs market has not returned to its level before the pandemic. At that point, claims were just above 200,000 per week.
Jerome Powell, the chair of the Fed, unsurprisingly provided an optimistic outlook for the US jobs market during a press conference on Wednesday. Powell said that the recovery had been curbed by labour supply, but it should recover fully as the economy continues its reopening.
Powell added that a number of factors were at play in keeping Americans out of jobs. This includes: skills mismatches, concerns over Covid-19 and childcare.
“I think it’s clear, and I am confident, that we are on a path to a very strong labor market,” Powell said. “I would expect that we would see strong job creation building up over the summer and going into the fall.”