MTS Help Center

The U.S. jobs market recovery accelerated its pace last week as fewer Americans headed to the unemployment line, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

First-time claims for unemployment insurance totaled 547,000, well below the Dow Jones estimate for 603,000 and a new low for the Covid-19 pandemic era.

The total represented a further decline in claims and gets the jobs picture closer to where it was pre-pandemic, though there’s still plenty of distance to cover.

Markets reacted little to the news, with stock futures pointing to a flat open and government bond yields mixed.

Still, the number of ongoing recipients has declined by about 2.3 million from early March, when the figure was 19.7 million — a sign that more people are being hired. Some long-term unemployed may have also exhausted all their benefits.

Some 17.4 million Americans are still receiving benefits under various programs, though that data runs two weeks behind the weekly applications claims number. Sharp increases in those applying for benefits through pandemic-related programs boosted the total recipients by nearly half a million.

Continuing claims, which run a week behind the headline data, also fell, dropping 34,000 to 3.67 million, a fresh pandemic low and another indication that conditions are thawing.

The national unemployment rate remains at 6%, well off the pandemic high of 14.7% but still considerably above the 50-year low of 3.5% level just before the pandemic shutdown.