First time unemployment claims continue falling

For the first time in months, fewer than 1 million Americans filed first-time unemployment claims in the week ending Aug. 8.

The four-week moving average is at about 1.3 million claims per week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, and the insured unemployment rate is 10.6%. About 16.1 million Americans remain out of work.

Mississippi is seeing a continuation of a downward trend in new unemployment claims. New claims are now in the range of claims filed in the first weeks of the crisis in Mississippi, with 5,038 new claims filed the week ending Aug. 8. Continued claims are not falling, however, with more than 135,000 claims filed the week of Aug. 1. In combination with 3,019 federal pandemic unemployment claims (which covers the self-employed, contract and gig workers), roughly 143,000 Mississippians do not have work.

That’s a far cry from the peak of the crisis in employment, which occurred the end of April and the first week of May. At that time, more than 25,000 new claims were being filed weekly in addition to about 200,000 continued claims. Still, it’s at least five to six times higher than numbers seen in the state before the COVID-19 crisis.

For the week ending Aug. 1, Mississippi’s unemployment rate was 10.91%.