With the continuing recovery from the economic shutdown, the weekly jobless claims report takes on significant importance. The report showed 751,000 unemployment claims were filed last week. That was down slightly from 758,000 the week before. It appears the claims are still very high and the fall from over a million has slowed. Prior to COVID-19, the weekly claims were a little over 200,000 which is very low. Any number below 300,000 is very good.

The continuing jobless claims, those people that have been receiving unemployment claims fell from 22.66 million to 21.51 million. This tells us that people are either running out of benefits or leaving because they found a job.

People are still struggling to get back into the workforce and any new shutdown will only make it harder for them. COVID-19 cases are rising. Is it more important to keep the economy open or shut it down? I leave that to the politicians to decide. With new treatments and a vaccine coming it’s a race.