The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits remains high with 833,000 workers filing new unemployment claims last week.
While unemployment numbers have improved since the early weeks of the pandemic, they are still much higher than any previous record unemployment rates.
More than 9 million laid-off workers have been rehired, and August has shown small reductions in new weekly claims. However, the Labor Department has changed the way that they adjust state jobless claims, adjusting for predictable seasonal patterns such as teachers returning to school and holiday workers who are typically laid off in January.
The adjusted numbers would have shown a slight reduction in claims for last week as compared to August’s previous weeks, however, the numbers were not calculated in the same way.