The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits has reached its lowest level since the pandemic struck last year, further evidence that the U.S. economy and job market are quickly rebounding from the pandemic recession.
Thursday’s report from the Labor Department showed that jobless claims fell by 26,000 last week to 360,000. The weekly tally, a proxy for layoffs, has fallen more or less steadily since topping 900,000 in early January.
The U.S. recovery from the recession is proceeding so quickly that many forecasters have predicted that the economy will expand this year by roughly 7%. That would be the most robust calendar-year growth since 1984.
The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has sharply reduced new viral cases — from a seven-day average of around 250,000 in early January to roughly 25,000 recently — despite a recent uptick. As the health crisis has receded, cooped-up Americans have increasingly emerged from their homes, eager to spend on things they had missed during pandemic lockdowns — dinners out, a round of drinks, sports and entertainment events, vacation getaways and shopping trips.
In response, businesses have scrambled to meet the unexpected surge in customer demand: They are posting job openings — a record 9.2 million in May — faster than they can fill them. The worker shortage in many industries is causing employers to raise wages and in some cases to raise prices to offset their higher labor costs.
The supply of potential hires is being held back by a variety of factors. Many Americans still have health concerns about working around large numbers of people. Many people, mostly women, are no longer working or looking for work because they had to care for children when schools and day care centers shut down. And roughly 2.6 million older workers took advantage of enlarged stock portfolios and home values to retire early.
A temporary $300-a-week federal unemployment benefit, on top of regular state jobless aid, may be enabling some people to be more selective in looking for and taking jobs. Roughly half the states plan to stop paying the supplement by the end of July in what proponents say is an effort to nudge more of the unemployed to seek jobs.
“As life normalizes and the service sector continues to gain momentum, we expect initial jobless claims to remain in a downtrend,″ said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at the consulting firm Maria Fiorini Ramirez.
Last month, employers added a hefty 850,000 jobs, and hourly pay rose a solid 3.6% compared with a year ago — faster than the pre-pandemic annual pace and evidence that companies are being compelled to pay more to attract and keep workers. Even so, the United States remains about 6.8 million jobs short of the number it had in February 2020, just before the virus erupted across the country and paralyzed the economy.
And weekly applications for unemployment benefits remain high by historical standards: Just before the pandemic, they amounted to about 220,000 a week. All told, 13.8 million Americans were receiving some type of unemployment aid during the week of June 26, down from 30.6 million a year earlier.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
