Tomorrow’s jobless claims report at 8:30 am ET is expected to show a decline to below 1 million regular first-time claims again. This happened before, in early August — before initial claims bounced reversed course and bounced higher.
Economists polled by Refinitiv predict 950,000 seasonally-adjusted first-time claims for unemployment benefits in the week ending August 29.
Importantly, this doesn’t include claims under the government’s other, pandemic-specific programs, such as the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, for which claims have been on the rise.
Continuing jobless claims, which count people filing for benefits for at least two weeks in a row, are expected at a seasonally-adjusted 14 million, about half a million down from the previous report. Again here, this number doesn’t include the pandemic-specific benefits.
Meanwhile, there’s another wonky aspect to tomorrow’s report:
The Labor Department is changing its methodology for seasonal adjustments. In normal times these adjustments are designed to smooth the data, but during the pandemic’s unprecedented effect on the labor market they have been more distracting than helpful. DOL will review its adjustment models again at the start of 2021.
Millions of Americans remain unemployed and in need of government aid to make ends meet. Since the supplemental $600 weekly jobless benefit expired at the end of July, things have gotten harder, even after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to bolster weekly payments by $300. Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urged Congress to agree another round of stimulus.