Jobless Claims - Week of 08/14/2021

Initial Jobless Claims, which measures individuals filing for unemployment benefits for the first time, were down nearly 30k to 348k last week, which is a post pandemic low. Continuing Claims, which measures individuals who continue to receive benefits, was down almost 80k to 2.8M. Extended Benefits were down 221k, while the Emergency Benefits were down 66k. It appears that states removing the extra benefits is having an impact. Additionally, those in states that have not yet removed them are likely starting to look for work ahead of the labor day expiration. 11.7M million individuals are still receiving benefits throughout all of their programs, which is down 312k from the previous report.