New applications for jobless benefits, a proxy for layoffs, declined last week, despite the latest surge in coronavirus cases due to the Delta variant.
First-time applications for benefits fell to a seasonally adjusted 375,000 in the week ended Aug. 7, the Labor Department said Thursday, from a revised 387,000 in the prior week. The four-week moving average, which smooths often volatile data, edged up to 396,250.
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’s 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 recent claims data match with other indicators showing momentum in the labor market and broader economy is continuing despite the cloud of uncertainty caused by the Delta variant.
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.”
