iM-Weekly Employment Monitor, 3/5/2021

iM-Weekly Unemployment Monitor

The economic recovery from the Covid crisis remains tepid. BLS Employment Situation Report shows that the unemployment rate dropped 0.1% to 6.2% The BLS reports 9.972 million are unemployed whereas the DOL reports that 18.027 million persons receive some form of unemployment benefit, or 11.25% of the labor force.

The DOL reported on 3/4/2021 unadjusted initial claims, totaled 748,078 (or 0.53% of covered employment) in the week ending February 27, an increase of 31,519 from the previous week. The 50 year long term average of initial claims as a percentage of Covered Employment  (January 1971 to today) is 0.38% and the average of the last business cycle (July 2009 to March 2020) is 0.24%

The advance unadjusted level of insured unemployment in state programs totaled 4,806,269, a decrease of 22,355 from the preceding week.

However, the total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending February 13 was 18,026,537, a decrease of 1,018,763 from the previous week.

Please refer The iM-Weekly Unemployment Monitor