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It’s been a year since unemployment claims peaked at nosebleed levels and signaled the depth and severity of the Covid downturn.

Yet claims for unemployment benefits persist at rates that would be considered high by the standards of past recessions, according to labor economists.

New claims for state benefits were about 741,000 last week through April 3, the Labor Department said Thursday. (The data don’t include an adjustment for seasonal factors.)

That’s 18,000 above the prior week and the second consecutive week claims have risen.

By comparison, almost 6.2 million Americans filed an initial claim for unemployment benefits during the same week last year, according to the labor agency.

Initial claims had hovered around 200,000 a week before mid-March 2020, when officials began issuing lockdown and stay-at-home orders to curb the coronavirus outbreak.

The dynamic points to continued volatility in the labor market, as people continue to cycle in and out of work and get laid off, economists said.

The numbers will likely improve as vaccinations continue and business restrictions continue to lift across the country, economists said. But some industries may not be so quick to recover.

Business travel, for example, will likely not rebound right away — a dynamic likely to impact hotels and other sectors that rely on such travelers, Wandner said.

Overall, there are 8.4 million fewer jobs available than before the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Leisure and hospitality jobs account for more than a third of that hole.

“The nation’s economy isn’t yet fully open nor is the pandemic vanquished,” said Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst at Bankrate.

More than 18 million people continue to collect unemployment benefits through various programs, according to Labor Department data.

Reference: CNBC