AFP, Washington :
Newly unemployed Americans filed nearly 1.42 million claims for jobless benefits last week, reversing recent months of decline as the world’s largest economy grapples with a surge in coronavirus cases.
The worse-than-expected Labor Department data comes as lawmakers in Washington debate whether to extend additional weekly payments made to unemployed people provided under the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March as businesses shut down to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Those closures prompted a spike in new weekly jobless benefit claims, which peaked at 6.9 million in late March but declined to 1.3 million earlier this month – a figure nonetheless more than twice any single week of the global financial crisis 12 years ago.
But the coronavirus is surging again nationwide with nearly 64,000 new cases reported in the 24 hours to Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University, and some areas are pausing or rolling back reopening measures. The rise in claims in the week ended July 18, together with the reported 974,999 people who applied for benefits under a program for workers who would not normally be eligible, adds to fears that the United States’ tentative recovery from the downturn is stalling.
“The overall message is that an economy able to recover well is stalling due to health concerns,” Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz, said on Twitter.
Newly unemployed Americans filed nearly 1.42 million claims for jobless benefits last week, reversing recent months of decline as the world’s largest economy grapples with a surge in coronavirus cases.
The worse-than-expected Labor Department data comes as lawmakers in Washington debate whether to extend additional weekly payments made to unemployed people provided under the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March as businesses shut down to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Those closures prompted a spike in new weekly jobless benefit claims, which peaked at 6.9 million in late March but declined to 1.3 million earlier this month – a figure nonetheless more than twice any single week of the global financial crisis 12 years ago.
But the coronavirus is surging again nationwide with nearly 64,000 new cases reported in the 24 hours to Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University, and some areas are pausing or rolling back reopening measures. The rise in claims in the week ended July 18, together with the reported 974,999 people who applied for benefits under a program for workers who would not normally be eligible, adds to fears that the United States’ tentative recovery from the downturn is stalling.
“The overall message is that an economy able to recover well is stalling due to health concerns,” Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz, said on Twitter.
