Bloomberg News
@Bloomberg-News·2.8M subscribers·40.1K videos
U.S. Initial Jobless Claims Rise for First Time in Five Weeks
Posted
November 19, 2020
Views
975
Likes
10
Comments
15
Engagement
November 19, 2020
975
10
15
2.56%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
Episode Timeline
Every episode in order around the one you’re watching — click any card and the page flips straight to it.
7:35Now PlayingApplications for U.S. state unemployment benefits rose for the first time in five weeks and remained well above pre-virus levels, suggesting the labor-market recovery is slowing amid a surging pandemic and fresh business restrictions.
Initial jobless claims in regular state programs totaled 742,000 in the week ended Nov. 14, up 31,000 from the prior week and compared with expectations for a decline, Labor Department data showed Thursday. On an unadjusted basis, the figure increased by about 18,000. The week included Veterans Day, and claims data tend to be more volatile around holidays.
Filings for U.S. initial jobless benefits climb for the first time in five weeks
Continuing claims -- the total pool of Americans on ongoing state unemployment benefits --fell 429,000 to 6.37 million in the week ended Nov. 7. The number of Americans claiming extended assistance continued to rise as many unemployed exhausted regular state benefits.
The main figures compared with economists’ projections for 700,000 initial claims and 6.4 million continuing claims, based on the median estimates in Bloomberg surveys.
The U.S. labor market is already suffering anew from the record pace of Covid-19 infections, which has spurred a new wave of government restrictions on businesses across the country. Restaurants are likely to be hit particularly hard by the loss of indoor dining in colder weather, and a lack of fresh stimulus will also weigh on the recovery during the wait for widespread vaccine distribution.
“The road to recovery is likely to be quite rocky, unfortunately,” Nathan Sheets, PGIM Fixed Income’s chief economist and a former Federal Reserve official, said on Bloomberg Television. “The virus and the restrictions being put in place to fight the virus are likely to take a bite out of economic activity over the next, say, three or four months.”
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Bloomberg Quicktake brings you live global news and original shows spanning business, technology, politics and culture. Make sense of the stories changing your business and your world.
To watch complete coverage on Bloomberg Quicktake 24/7, visit or watch on Apple TV, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Fire TV and Android TV on the Bloomberg app.
Connect with us on…
Breaking News on YouTube
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
