The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits hit a 52-year low last week, as the country's job market is recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and recession.
The Labor Department said on Thursday that unemployment claims dropped 43,000 to 184,000 last week -- the lowest it's been since September 1969. The four-week moving average fell below 219,000, the lowest since the pandemic hit the United States in March 2020.
Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities, said that seasonal volatility contributed to last week's drop in claims as the job market fluctuates during the holiday seasons. Claims actually rose by nearly 64,000 to almost 281,000 before seasonal adjustments.
Just under two million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment benefits the week that ended Nov. 27.
Weekly claims have fallen steadily most of 2021 since topping 900,000 one week in early January. They are now below to the 220,000-a-week level, which was standard before the pandemic in March 2020. In March and April of 2020, employers cut 22.4 million jobs.
Since April 2020, the United States has regained nearly 18.5 million jobs, but is still 3.9 million jobs short of where it stood in February 2020. Employers added just 210,000 jobs last month, according to the Department of Labor. Their report showed that the unemployment rate dropped to a pandemic low of 4.2 percent from 4.6 percent in October.
The department also reported that 4.2 million people quit their jobs in October, just shy of the record 4.4 million from September. While employers posted 11 million job openings in October.
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