Another 3.2 Million Jobless Claims Filed

According to the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report, released by the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of initial claims for unemployment insurance hit 3.2 million for the week ending May 2^nd, bringing the total to 33.5 million over the past seven weeks.

In the week ending May 2^nd, the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits, known as jobless claims, was at a seasonally adjusted level of 3,169,000, a decrease of 677,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 3,846,000 claims. The four-week moving average decreased to 4,173,500, from a revised average of 5,035,000 in the previous week. After it hit a record of 6.9 million for the week ending March 28^th, the number of jobless claims has declined gradually in the following weeks. By the week ending May 2^nd, the number of jobless claims was less than half of the peak of 6.9 million, and the seven-week’s jobless claims totaled 33.5 million.

The seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate increased by 3.1 percentage points to 15.5% for the week ending April 25^th. The number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment increased to 22,647,000 during the week ending April 25^th, from an upward revised level of 18,011,000 in the previous week. It was the highest level of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment in the history of the seasonally adjusted series.

The unadjusted number of initial claims, released by the U.S. Department of Labor, totaled 3,495,703 in the week ending April 25^th, a decrease of 785,945 from the previous week. The chart below presents the top 10 states ranked by the number of initial claims for the week ending April 25^th. Florida, California, Georgia, Texas, and New York reported the most initial claims. Florida led the way with 433,103 claims, followed by California with 325,343 claims and Georgia with 266,565 claims. The number of jobless claims in these 10 states accounted for about 56% of the total number of jobless claims in the week ending April 25^th.

The trending of initial claims was mixed. For the week ending April 25^th, Washington (+56,030), Georgia (+19,562), New York (+14,229), Oregon (+12,091), and Alabama (+8,534) reported the largest increases in initial claims, while California (-203,017), Florida (-73,567), Connecticut (-69,767), New Jersey (-68,173), and Pennsylvania (-66,698) had the largest decreases in initial claims.