While weekly initial jobless claims decreased for the 13th straight week, continuing claims, which lags initial jobless claims by one week, rose by 59,000 in the week ending June 20. The labor market is gradually recovering from the COVID-19 crisis as workers return to work, albeit slowly, and a full recovery of labor market may take a while with an uncertain future.
The U.S. Department of Labor released the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report for the week ending June 27. The number of initial jobless claims declined slightly by 55,000 to a seasonally adjusted level of 1,427,000, compared to the previous week’s revised claims of 1,482,000. Initial claims have declined for the past 13 weeks from the peak of 6.9 million but remained above 1 million. The four-week moving average decreased to 1,503,750, from a revised average of 1,621,250 in the previous week. Weekly new claims brought the 15-week’s total to 48.7 million.
Meanwhile, the number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment, known as continuing claims, rose slightly by 59,000 to a seasonally adjusted level of 19,290,000 in the week ending June 20. Continuing claims stayed below 20 million for the second week. The four-week moving average declined by 494,500 from the previous week’s revised average to 19,854,000. The seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate remained unchanged at 13.2% for the week ending June 20. The previous week’s rate was revised down by 0.2 percentage point from 13.4% to 13.2%.
The U.S. Department of Labor also released the advanced number of actual initial claims under state programs without seasonal adjustments. The unadjusted number of advanced initial claims totaled 1,445,481 in the week ending June 27, a decrease of 14,575 from the previous week.
The chart below presents the top 10 states ranked by the number of advanced initial claims for the week ending June 27. California, Georgia and Texas had the most advanced initial claims. California led the way with 279,341 initial claims, followed by Georgia with 115,750 initial claims and Texas with 96,141 initial claims. Meanwhile, it is the fourth straight week that South Dakota (+576) had the least advanced initial claims across all the states.
Compared to the previous week, Indiana, Michigan and Washington had the largest increases in advanced initial claims for the week ending June 27. Indiana reported an increase of 24,033 advanced initial claims. Michigan increased by 17,671 and Washington increased by 8,110. Oklahoma (-41,933), Florida (-11,075) and Maryland (-10,620) had the largest decreases in advanced initial claims.
