The number of Americans who applied for jobless benefits in early October shot up to the highest level in seven weeks, possibly a sign that fresh outbreaks of the coronavirus in many states have hurt employment again.
Initial jobless claims filed through state programs jumped by 53,000 to 898,000 in the week ended Oct. 10 from a revised 845,000 in the prior week, according to figures released Thursday by the U.S. Labor Department. Economists had forecast new claims to fall to 825,000.
An unadjusted 372,891 people also filed new claims under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Act, the federal law that temporarily made self-employed workers eligible for benefits for the first time.
That put the number of actual or unadjusted new claims at an estimated at 1.26 million, a touch lower than in the prior week.
There’s a big caveat, however. The number of new claims in California was frozen at 226,179 for the third week in a row. The state stopped updating its figures three weeks ago after launching an effort to whittle down a large backlog, eradicate duplicate claims and weed out fraud.
Stripping out California’s estimate, the number of unadjusted jobless claims in the other states rose by 76,670 — what some experts are calling a worrisome sign.
