U.S. unemployment claims perpetually filed as COVID-19 hits economy

Americans, by the millions, have yet again filed for unemployment last week. This telegraphs further layoffs not only from the consumer industry, but with other branches of the economy as well. And despite the country’s apparent reopening, it is forecasted that the number will remain afloat.

The lockdown compelled by the COVID-19 outbreak had placed global economy in dire straits. This had led to economic analysts concluding a prolonged economic recovery. While this is not the first time that the U.S. faced financial turmoil, it stands that the economy had shrunk unceremoniously at its steepest since the Great Recession of 2007. Private payrolls had fallen by 20.2 million in the previous month which resulted into massive employment losses.

“Even with the economy slowly starting to reopen, the number of unemployed should continue to rise sharply as governments, as well as businesses that have tried but not succeeded at holding the line, are now laying off workers,” noted Joel Naroff, the chief economist at Naroff Economics in Holland, Pennsylvania.

“The pace of new claims for unemployment is slowing, but remains at levels unimaginable just a few months ago.”

For the week ended May 2nd, a Reuters survey stipulates that unemployment benefits likely totaled a seasonally-adjusted 3.0 million. That plummmeted from 3.839 million in the week that had just wrapped, hitting the fifth straight week of decrease in application since a record of 6.867 million back in March 28th.

The filings from the last week is seen to decrease the number of declared unemployment individuals to around 33.3 million since March 21st, 22% of the working age public.

Scheduled for a release on Friday, the Labor Department’s employment report will not, in any way, be impacted by the current figures as it is not covered by the period of the survey..

Nevertheless, jobless claims still reached 26.5 million through the week of April 12th.