New applications for jobless benefits likely declined last week, indicating a healing labor market despite the uncertainty caused by the latest surge in coronavirus cases due to the Delta variant, economists say.
Economists estimate that first-time applications for unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, fell to a seasonally adjusted 375,000 in the week ending Aug. 7, from 385,000 in the prior week, according to a Wall Street Journal survey. That would mark the third straight week of declines. The Labor Department will release the latest numbers at 8:30 a.m. EDT Thursday.
The number of new claims filed has held relatively steady since the beginning of June, in a range between 368,000 and 424,000. That is well below the roughly 6 million new claims filed in late March and early April 2020, but above the roughly 220,000 applications filed weekly in the months before the pandemic.
The claims data match with other indicators showing that momentum in the labor market and broader economy is continuing despite signs that the recent rise in coronavirus infections is starting to crimp some business activity.
The variant “certainly is a risk and it could dampen things a little bit,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics. “But our baseline view is that with each successive wave, the labor market and the economy has reacted less and less.”
