WASHINGTON - Another 1.4 million laid off U.S. workers filed for unemployment compensation last week, the first time since March the figure had risen from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
The newest figure is a sign the world’s biggest economy is struggling to regain its footing in the face of a new surge in the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. that President Donald Trump acknowledged this week is likely to get worse before it gets better.
The single-week high of 6.9 million claims came in March, but the recent four-week rolling average of nearly 1.4 million claims a week remains historically high.
In all, the government said about 16.2 million workers remain unemployed even as millions of workers have returned to their jobs. A total of 52.4 million workers have collected jobless benefits at some point in the last four months.
The unemployment benefit claim figures since mid-March have been staggering, easily topping the 695,000 total in one week in 1982 that had been the highest on record until the coronavirus pandemic swept into the United States.
Millions of the unemployed have returned to work, but those still left without work are facing new financial difficulties, with the national government’s $600-a-week boost to less generous state unemployment benefits set to expire in a week. In addition, economic experts say employers have cut millions of jobs from their ledgers, leaving one-time workers with nothing to return to, or have permanently closed their businesses.
The White House and Congress are considering what additional aid laid-off workers should get from the federal government, but no decisions have been reached yet. An additional boost to the U.S. economy is likely, but Republican lawmakers want to limit the total to about $1 trillion, while Democrats are pushing for about $3 trillion.
Smaller federal unemployment benefits — such as $200 to $400 a week on top of less generous state assistance — are possible beyond the end of July, but no number has been set or a date for how long it would extend.
Trump wanted a temporary end to the 7.65% payroll tax U.S. workers pay to support payments to older Americans and help pay for their health care. But his Republican cohorts in the Senate dropped it from their proposal, with many opposed because the tax cut would only benefit those who are working, not the unemployed who currently have no earnings to tax.
Congress could also send another round of $1,200 stimulus payments to most taxpayers, even as some Republican lawmakers have voiced concerns about the country’s ever-increasing national debt that now totals more than $26 trillion. Some lawmakers have called for incentive payments to returning workers, some of whom have collected more in unemployment benefits than from their earnings while working.
The number of new U.S. coronavirus cases has surged to an average of 66,000 a day and nearly 4 million total. Trump, facing a difficult re-election contest in November against former Vice President Joe Biden, said the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. “will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better.” But Trump says the economy will regain strength later this year and into 2021.
The southern tier of U.S. states that had escaped the brunt of the pandemic in March and April has been particularly hard hit. Their governors reopened businesses — too soon, some now acknowledge — and younger people started socializing in public again at bars and restaurants without embracing such preventive practices as wearing a face mask or social distancing themselves from others by at least two meters.
Now, some state governors are ordering these businesses shut down again. Investment banker Goldman Sachs said 70% of the country has either reversed reopening plans or delayed them.
Key U.S. economic officials are predicting the country’s full recovery from the pandemic will take a lengthy period, extending well into 2021.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has said the country’s unemployment rate improved to 11.1% in June, compared to the official May figure of 13.3%. But the June figure was compiled at mid-month before the surge of new coronavirus cases.
The Federal Reserve has predicted that U.S. unemployment will fall to 9.3% by the end of this year and to 6.5% by the end of 2021.
The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus has now topped 143,000, by far the most of any country in the world, and health experts predict tens of thousands more will die in coming months.