WASHINGTON, May 19, 2022 (Xinhua) — The US Labor Department said Thursday that initial jobless claims in the United States rose last week for the third consecutive week amid tight labor market, reaching 218,000.
In the week ending May 14, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose by 21,000 from the previous week’s level of 197,000, according to a report from the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Tim Quinlan and Sarah Cotsakis, economists at Wells Fargo Securities, noted that the average female jobless in March was “staggering”, hitting its lowest level in the streak in more than 50 years at 178,000. Although jobless claims rose in April, they did not exceed 184,400 which represents the fifth lowest monthly reading on record.
Despite the upward trend in recent weeks, unemployment claims remain historically low, with last week’s figure matching the 2019 average before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The latest report also showed that the number of people continuing to collect regular government unemployment benefits decreased by 25,000 to 1.317 million during the week ending May 7. This number peaked in April and May in 2020, when it reached more than 20 million.
The total number of people claiming benefits across all programs — state and federal combined — in the week ending April 30 decreased by 68,885 to 1.371 million.
Firms were struggling to hire as supply in the labor market might not meet demand. The number of job vacancies changed little at 11.5 million by the end of March, marking the highest level in the history of the series that began in December 2000.
However, the monthly employment report showed that the number of unemployed fell slightly from 6 million in March to 5.9 million in April, indicating that there are 1.9 jobs for every unemployed person.
