Weekly Jobless Claims Dip Below 1 million in the Week Ending 29th August 2020

The U.S. Department of Labor is reporting that an additional 881,000* Americans made their initial filing for unemployment benefits during the week ending on Saturday August 29^th. A decrease of 130,000 from the previous week’s revised level. Still well below the peak of 6.9 million which dates back to the week ending March 28^th.  Claims are once again below 1 million, where they have been for the past 20 of 22 weeks. The 4-week moving average was 991,750, a decrease of 77,500 from the previous week’s revised average. This week’s new claims brought the twenty-one-week total to 58.331 million. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment, known as continuing claims during the week ending 22^nd August was 13,254,000, a decrease of 1,238,000 from the previous week’s revised level. Continuing claims remain below 20 million for the eighth week in a row. The 4-week moving average was 14,496,250, a decrease of 709,000 from the previous week’s revised average. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 9.1% for the week ending 22^nd August, a decrease of 0.8 % point from the previous week’s unrevised rate.

*Beginning with the Unemployment Insurance (UI) Weekly Claims News Release issued Thursday, September 3, 2020, the methodology used to seasonally adjust the national initial claims and continued claims reflects additive factors as opposed to multiplicative factors. Prior to September 2020, the seasonally adjusted unemployment insurance claims series used multiplicative seasonal adjustment factors.