Unemployment Claims Down, But Recovery Remains Uneven

Herald Bulletin (Anderson, IN)

Sep. 18--ANDERSON -- Although the number of people filing initial claims for jobless aid appears to be trending down both nationally and locally, unemployment in both categories remains historically high.

Thursday's news that 860,000 Americans filed first-time unemployment claims for the week ending Sept. 12 represented another week-to-week decline, but many experts say the recovery from arguably the worst recession on record remains fragile.

"The labor market continues to heal from the viral recession, but unemployment remains extremely elevated and will remain a problem for at least a couple of years," said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Bank. "With almost 30 million people receiving some form of unemployment assistance, the labor market is still in the midst of an historic downturn."

Locally, the unemployment rate in the Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson metropolitan statistical area (MSA) ticked down to 7.7% in July -- the latest period for which data is available -- from 10.6% the previous month, according to adjusted estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that number is still more than double the figure from July 2019. Nearly 84,000 Hoosiers in the region are unemployed.

Although the U.S. economy has recovered nearly half of the 22 million jobs lost in March and April due to the pandemic, experts say the numbers remain sobering. For perspective, before the pandemic, weekly jobless claims had never risen above 700,000. They've stayed above that number for 26 consecutive weeks.

Faucher cautions that the recovery will continue to be sporadic.

"Data on unemployment insurance claims indicate that job growth will be slower through the rest of 2020 and that full recovery in the labor market will take years," he said.