Big Drop In Number Of Jobless Claims

The number of people filing initial jobless claims is dropping significantly. The Labor Department reports 803-thousand Americans filed for first-time unemployment claims last week, about 85-thousand fewer than expected. It’s also a drop of about 89-thousand who had filed the previous week. The number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits fell to about five-point-three-million, which is the 14th time in the past 15 weeks that number has fallen.

Congress passed added unemployment benefits to Americans who are jobless, many of them because of the pandemic. They would receive an additional 300-dollars a week under the bill passed Monday. However, President Trump last night appeared to suggest he’s not going to sign the bill unless Congress increases the stimulus checks to most Americans to two-thousand-dollars. The states seeing the largest increase in jobless claims were Illinois, California, Kansas, Delaware and Ohio. The states with the biggest decreases were Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

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