Economists estimate the Labor Department will report that 2.5 million Americans filed new applications for unemployment insurance last week, down from the 3.2 million the prior week.
America’s dispiriting weekly tally of COVID-19-related layoffs is likely to add millions more Thursday, though the figure is expected to continue to fall.
That would push total unemployment claims the past eight weeks to a staggering 36 million and foreshadow another punishing jobs report for May, though payroll losses should fall noticeably from the record 20.5 million in April. April’s unemployment rate hit 14.7%, highest since the Great Depression, up from 4.4% the prior month, and a 50-year low of 3.5% in February.
The weekly count of jobless claims has declined for five straight weeks after peaking at 6.9 million at the end of March. If the trend continues, the figure should dip below a million by June, says economist Greg Daco of Oxford Economics. That, however, would still remain far higher than the previous record of 695,000 unemployment claims during a deep recession in October 1982.
Daco reckons the May employment report will reveal about five million net job losses while economist Ryan Sweet of Moody’s Analytics predicts five to 10 million. A claims total below 3 million Thursday would generally bolster expectations for fewer job losses in May while a number above that could spark concerns of larger-than-anticipated cuts, Sweet says.Most states issued stay-at-home orders and closed down nonessential businesses in mid-March to curb the spread of the virus.
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