Unemployment Insurance Claims Are At Lowest Level Since Pandemic Began

Unemployment insurance claims are the lowest they've been since the beginning of the pandemic of America in March 2020, according to a Department of Labor report.

During the week of June 26, initial unemployment insurance claims were at 364,000, a decrease of 51,000 from the previous week. However, the unemployment rate did not change from 2.5% since the previous week. The largest decreases in unemployment claims came from Illinois, California and Ohio.

While job growth has averaged 500,000 per month over the last several months, there has been a lot of volatility in that growth. According to the White House Council of Economic Advisors, that volatility in job growth comes from "economic reverberations of the pandemic shock," because of swift and significant policy changes that have attempted to stimulate the economy and because survey data for economists is harder to come by, as noted by the Harvard Business Review.