US Weekly Jobless Claims Fall By 1% to 751,000 for Week to 31 October, Labour Dept. Says

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Some 751,000 Americans filed for jobless benefits last week, about 1 percent lower from the previous week, Labour Department data showed on Thursday, as the US job market continued to struggle seven months into the coronavirus pandemic.

"In the week ending October 31, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 751,000", the department said in a news release. It revised upward claims in the previous week to 24 October to 758,000, putting the current week’s change in unemployment at a negative 7,000, or about 1 percent lower.

Continuous claims for the latest week showed filings from 7.29 million Americans, lower than the previous week’s number of 7.82 million. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, stood at 5 percent, down 0.3 percent from the previous week.

The United States lost more than 21 million jobs between March and April, at the height of lockdowns forced by the COVID-19. A rebound of 2.5 million jobs was logged in May and 4.8 million in June before the recovery began slowing. For all of September, there were just 661,000 jobs added.

The US economy grew by a record 33.1 percent in the third quarter, after shrinking by 31.4 percent in the previous three months and 5 percent in the first quarter. In 2019, the economy grew by 4.1 percent.

Despite the rebound, the economic outlook for the United States remains dire with a rash of new coronavirus infections reported across a nation with 9.5 million COVID-19 cases and over 233,000 fatalities to date. New lockdowns imposed by Germany and France are also likely to dampen the global trade, putting further strain on the United States.