{"id":200485,"date":"2021-03-27T21:43:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-28T02:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/03\/27\/jobless-claims-finally-fall-below-pre-pandemic-record\/"},"modified":"2021-03-27T21:43:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-28T02:43:00","slug":"jobless-claims-finally-fall-below-pre-pandemic-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/03\/27\/jobless-claims-finally-fall-below-pre-pandemic-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Jobless Claims Finally Fall Below Pre-Pandemic Record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/weekly-jobless-claims-coronavirus-03-25-2021-11616627094?mod=hp_lead_pos1\">684,000 initial claims, less than the pre-pandemic peak of 695,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, this is unmitigated good news:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">Jobless claims fell to their lowest level of the pandemic last week as stronger hiring and consumer spending drive a U.S. economic revival. <\/p>\n<p>Worker filings for unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, fell to 684,000 last week from 781,000 a week earlier. Claims are now at the lowest point since mid-March of last year, before lockdowns triggered millions of layoffs. They are also below the pre-pandemic high of 695,000, a threshold not crossed for 52 weeks. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe recovery is really hitting full steam again, and all of the conditions will be in place for a real, explosive liftoff in the summer when hopefully we\u2019ve reached a higher vaccination threshold,\u201d said Julia Pollak, labor economist at jobs site ZipRecruiter.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal this month raised their average forecast for 2021 economic growth to 5.95%, measured from the fourth quarter of last year to the same period this year, from a 4.87% projection in February\u2019s survey. The higher figure would mark the fastest such pace in nearly four decades, following a steep downturn last year.  <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If these predictions are accurate, this is a blistering pace of economic growth. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There were 684,000 initial claims, less than the pre-pandemic peak of 695,000. Yes, this is unmitigated good news: Jobless claims fell to their lowest level of the pandemic last week as stronger hiring and consumer spending drive a U.S. economic revival. Worker filings for unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, fell to 684,000 last week &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,975,1089,992],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-employment","category-recession","category-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}