The US economy recieved some welcome news today as the number of Americans claiming initial jobless benefit fell for a second consecutive week.
The US Labor Department reported on Thursday that the initial claims for state unemployment benefits in the US fell to a seasonally adjusted 787,000 for the week ending December 26th, compared with 806,000 in the week prior. The 19,000 decline was better than expected after analysts had forecast between 828,00 – 833,000 applications for the latest week.
Continuing claims, including those who have received unemployment benefits for at least two continuous weeks, dropped by 103,000 to 5.219 million for the week of December 19th.
The number of Americans receiving benefits across all unemployment programs declined by 800,000 to 19.6 million.
Vaccine Rollout Important
John Ryding, an economic advisor at Brean Capital, commented on the figures and the importance of the vaccine rollout. He told CNBC:
“There is no real improvement in the data,”
“What we’re seeing is a very difficult time in the economy with the virus pickup that we have seen and the slow rollout of the vaccination.”
“There is good news ahead, but you can’t see it in these numbers,”
“That good news is going to come at the point where there are enough [vaccine] shots in people’s arms and we approach something like herd immunity. That’s not going to be, unfortunately, until the summer.”
John Ryding, an economic advisor at Brean Capital
