Another million file jobless claims

More than a million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week in the latest sign that economic recovery remains elusive.

CNN’s Anneken Tappe reported:

Another 1 million American workers filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The report met economists’ expectations, and was a small decline from the prior week, but the report was still somewhat of a disappointment. So far, we’ve only seen one week — at the start of August — with fewer than a million claims since March, when the pandemic started to take its toll on America’s job market.

Paul Wiseman from the AP wrote:

“Layoffs are ongoing reflecting interruptions to activity from virus containment that are likely resulting in permanent closures and job losses,” Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a research report.

Farooqi added that “the risk of permanent damage to the labor market remains high which will slow the pace of recovery. The return to pre-pandemic levels of prosperity is set to be an uncertain and prolonged process.”

USA Today’s Charisse Jones noted:

The overall number of Americans diagnosed with the coronavirus has flattened after peaking in late April, but it continues to surge in parts of the country, recently rising fastest in several Southern states as well as North and South Dakota.

Now, what the Trump administration portrayed as a brief economic detour may be hardening into a downturn akin to the Great Recession of 2007-09, with as much as half of temporary layoffs and furloughs becoming permanent and the jobs landscape taking years to recover.