No surprise to some of us…
The number of Americans filing for unemployment insurance unexpectedly rose last week, a sign of the job market’s fragility five months after the coronavirus pandemic began to devastate the economy.
The economy remains challenging for many American workers, with the unemployment rate at 10.2 percent and sectors like leisure and hospitality experiencing huge losses in employment.
Last week, 1.1 million workers filed new claims for state unemployment benefits, the Labor Department reported Thursday, compared with 971,000 the previous week.
“It definitely suggests that momentum in the recovery is slowing,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West.
“We’re still at a historically high level of claims,” he added, noting that the weekly peak during the Great Recession stood at 665,000. “The labor market is in the I.C.U.”…..