Layoffs in the US fall to minimum values
The US Department of Labor indicated that weekly subsidy requests fell to 166,000, which represents a drop of 5,000
The initial requests for unemployment benefits reached a total of 166,000 applications last week. It represents a decrease of 5,000 compared to the 171,000 applications for subsidy in the previous seven days and the lowest figure recorded since 1968, according to the Department of Labor of the United States.
The rolling measure for the last four weeks has thus stood at 170,000 jobless claims per week, underlining the good performance of the US labor market.
Initial claims for jobless aid reached a record 6.149 million in early April 2020. Under normal conditions, the weekly number of claims for benefits is estimated to range between 200,000 and 250,000.
The unemployment rate in the United States stood at 3.6 % last March, two tenths less than the figure recorded the previous month.
In this way, the rate is close to the minimum reached before the pandemic. In February 2020, before the impact of Covid-19 in the country, the unemployment rate stood at 3.5 %, which was already a minimum for several decades.
Source: dpa
