The number of continuing jobless claims rose to a greater-than-expected 22.6 million, signaling April job losses over 20 million.
New claims for unemployment benefits jumped to a total 33.5 million for the past seven weeks, but economists are now carefully watching continuing claims for benefits, which rose more than expected.The continuing claims number will be an important signal on the health of the work force and should start to decline in coming weeks as more states reopen and the economy restarts more broadly.
Tom Simons, Jefferies money market economist, said that number will not likely begin to decline until much more of the economy is reopened. The continuing claims data is lagging, as are the reports of new claims, because state unemployment offices have been overwhelmed by the record job losses in such a short period of time.
"There's definitely ... people above this number that are unemployed and are not receiving benefits," said Simons. "That's something that's hard to capture and hard to know." Simons said not all workers apply or show up on the unemployment rolls.
In data for the week ending April 25, the government reported continuing claims rose 4.6 million, about 2.6 million more than expected. There were 18 million continuing claims in the week earlier, ending April 18, the when the government collected data for the monthly jobs report.
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