A significant decline in North Carolinians filing for initial unemployment-insurance benefits occurred for the third consecutive week, the U.S. Labor Department said Thursday.
There was a 20% drop-off from a revised 57,354 to 45,974 for the week that ended May 16, the department reported.
North Carolina had the 12th highest UI claim filings for the second consecutive week after being in the top 10 most weeks since mid-March.
North Carolina’s highest weekly total for UI claims related to the COVID-19 pandemic is 172,745 for the week that ended March 28.
Nationwide, there was a decrease in initial unemployment claims at 2.44 million, compared with a revised 2.67 million for the week that ended May 9. The peak has been 6.87 million the week that ended March 28.
The overall total of unemployment claims since March 15 is 36.57 million, although that number could be affected by individuals filing multiple claims if they had multiple jobs.
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By contrast, the number of unemployment claims nationwide was at 282,000 the week before governors and city and county governments began imposing stay-at-home restrictions to slow the pandemic’s spread.
The U.S. Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration said the seasonally adjusted U.S. unemployment rate was 17.2% for the week that ended May 9, up from 15.7% for the week that ended May 2.
“While new claims have leveled out — and have now declined for seven straight weeks — they remain at extremely high levels even as the majority of states begin to re-open,” said Andrew Stettner, senior fellow for the left-leaning think tank The Century Foundation.
“Clearly, reopening the economy does not necessarily equate with robust rehiring.
“Among those 35 states, nine actually saw an increase in the number of new workers claiming benefits, including Florida, which added almost 1 million new claims,” Stettner said.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported May 8 that the U.S. unemployment rate climbed from 4.4% in March to 14.7% in April. It’s the largest month-over-month increase since the bureau began compiling seasonally adjusted U.S. jobless reports in January 1948.
Meanwhile, North Carolina faces its day of reckoning Friday when its April jobless rate is released. Economists have projected a state jobless rate between 12% and 15%.
By comparison, the state jobless rate reached a 33-year peak of 10.9% in 2010 as the state and national economies began their slow recoveries from the Great Recession. The Triad peak was 11.5% in February 2009.
As of Thursday morning, the N.C. Division of Employment Security listed 922,821 individuals as having filed a combined 1.25 million state and federal claims. DES said 565,970 claimants have received state and/or federal benefits, or 61.3% of all applicants.
Some individuals have been required to file a second claim — after being determined to be ineligible for initial state benefits — in order to qualify for federal benefits that often include extended state benefits.
About 18.6% of the 4.97 million North Carolinians considered in the state’s workforce as of mid-March have filed a state or federal unemployment claim.
There were 14,823 new claimants Wednesday. The daily filing peak was 34,706 on March 30.
Overall unemployment-insurance benefits payments were at $2.34 billion as of Thursday morning.
The breakdown is: $1.28 billion from the federal pandemic unemployment-compensation package; $662.9 million in state benefits, and $399.1 million in the federal pandemic unemployment assistance package.
With the state’s Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund at close to $3.85 billion before the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic began to be felt, 17.2% of that money had been used as of Thursday morning.
Individuals without jobs and not actively looking for work are unaccounted for in the labor force.
The labor force data also does not distinguish how many workers are full time, temporary or part time, or how many jobs individuals are working.
The bureau’s U6 index includes those categories. That rate jumped from 8.4% to 22.8% in April when including an additional 6.6 million not in the workforce. The bureau said those totals include 574,000 “who believed that no jobs were available for them.”
By comparison, the N.C. U6 index rate was 7% on March 31. The U6 index at the state level is updated at the end of each quarter.