US weekly jobless claims see moderate rise
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Claims for unemployment benefits increased 7,000 to a seasonally adjusted 207,000 for the week which started on January 1, 2022.
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The US' working-class experiences the economic repercussions of COVID-19 the most.
The number of US citizens who are filing claims for unemployment benefits rose last week unexpectedly as COVID-19 infections surpassed a million in the US, disrupting the economy and business activities.
The increase is moderate, as projected by the US Labor Department on Thursday. There is a shortage of works in the workforce, and the number of infections of the Coronavirus - driven by Omicron - is expected to peak soon.
"It is possible that the recent spread of COVID has put that earlier downward trend on hold," Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan, said "That said, it is an encouraging sign for the labor market that claims have not meaningfully jumped in response so far."
Claims for unemployment benefits increased 7,000 to a seasonally adjusted 207,000 for the week which started on January 1, 2022.
Last Thursday, US claims for joblessness dropped by 8,000 to 198,000, which is down from 206,000 a week earlier. After last year's coronavirus recession, the job market is expanding, lessening unemployment.
The four-week average fell to 199,000 jobless claims, which is the lowest-seen number since October 1969.
In the week of December 18, it was reported that 1.7 million American citizens were collecting unemployment benefits from the government, which is the lowest number since March 2020. The number decreased by 140,000 from the week before it.
Over a million
With the awakening of the new year, COVID-19 cases have doubled from 6 days ago till yesterday, Wednesday.
“We are definitely in the middle of a very severe surge and uptick in cases,” Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Sunday. “The acceleration of cases that we have seen is really unprecedented, gone well beyond anything we’ve seen before,” he added.
The US tally for recorded cases on New Year's Eve was around 590,000, which has surpassed a million by now as Omicron ripped through the states, according to Bloomberg.
The current number of recorded cases exceeds twice the number of recorded cases in any country during the pandemic. In May 2021, as the Delta variant surged, India reported some 414,000 cases, setting a record, which has now been broken.
