Unemployment Claims Cooled Off Last Week, But Remain Pretty High

Skerdian Meta•Thursday, April 16, 2020•1 min read

One of the worst effects of the coronavirus apart from the number of deaths, is the horrible effect it is having on employment. The unemployment rate has surged all across the West, with unemployment claims being enormous, especially in the US.

Jobless claims surged from around 200k until the middle of March, to more than 3 million in the third week and then above 6.5 million in the following two weeks. Today’s unemployment report is for last week and was pretty bad once again, but not as bad as the previous one. Below is the report and the components of it:

Jobless claims 5245K vs 5500K estimate
Previous week’s report revised up 9K to 6615K
Initial jobless claims 5245K versus 5500K estimate
4- week average for initial jobless claims 5508.5 K vs 4267.75K
Continuing claims 11976K vs 13260K estimate. Record level for continuing claims
4-week average for continuing jobless claims 6066.25K versus 3497.75K
The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending April 4 were in Georgia (+256,312), Michigan (+84,219), Arizona (+43,488), Texas (+38,982), and Virginia (+34,872),
The largest decreases were in California (-139,511), Pennsylvania (-127,037), Florida (-58,599), Ohio (-48,097), and Massachusetts (-41,776).
A total of 22 million workers have now applied for jobless claims over the last 4 weeks.

The unemployment claims have declined by more than 1 million, but they remain really high nonetheless at more than 5 million people a week. With these levels of jobless claims, the unemployment in the US will go up 100 million in a couple of months, if the shut down lasts that long. We’re already more than a month in now, so two months is not too long actually. So, unemployment will be the main legacy of coronavirus on the world.

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Skerdian Meta

Lead Analyst

Skerdian Meta Lead Analyst. Skerdian is a professional Forex trader and a market analyst. He has been actively engaged in market analysis for the past 11 years. Before becoming our head analyst, Skerdian served as a trader and market analyst in Saxo Bank's local branch, Aksioner. Skerdian specialized in experimenting with developing models and hands-on trading. Skerdian has a masters degree in finance and investment.