new claims [for unemployment] totaled 684,000 for the week ended March 20, the first time the number has been below 700,000 during the Covid-19 era. The level was a substantial decline from the 781,000 from a week earlier and was the lowest since March 14, 2020, just as the pandemic had begun....
In addition to the drop in weekly claims, continuing claims, which run a week behind, declined to 3.87 million, a slide of 264,000...
back in the pre Covid era new claims were at about 100k and continuing claims were at about 1M so we have a long, long way to go to reach the economic recovery levels in the Trump era |