Posted on 11/10/21
| News Source: Yahoo Finance
New weekly jobless claims touched a fresh pandemic-era low yet again this week, as labor shortages and companies' efforts to bring on and retain workers, helping to put a cap on the pace of firings and other separations.
The Labor Department released its jobless claims report Wednesday morning, or a day earlier than usual due to the Veterans Day holiday on Thursday. Here were the main metrics from the print, compared to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg:
Initial unemployment claims, week ended November 5: 267,000 vs. 260,000 expected and a revised 271,000 during prior week
Continuing claims, week ended October 30: 2.160 million vs. 2.050 million expected and a reivsed 2.101 million during prior week
Though claims were a touch higher than expected, they still held below the psychologically important 300,000 level for a fifth straight week and reached their lowest level since March 2020, taking out last week's pandemic-era low. New claims have been coming in at less than half their rate from this time last year, when claims were averaging more than 700,000 per week.