Weekly US jobless claims continue to slowly fall back

Layoffs in the US continued at a furious, even if a bit slower, pace last week and a jump in so-called secondary unemployment claims appeared to show that gross hiring was recovering only slowly.

According to the Department of Labor, initial unemployment claims during the week ending on 30 May dropped by 249,000 to reach 1.877m (consensus: 1.75m).

The four-week moving average meanwhile, which aims to smooth out the variations from one week to the next, fell by 324,750 to 2.284m.

Secondary unemployment claims meanwhile, which exclude those filed for the first time and referencing the week ending on 23 May, rose by 649,000 to 21.487m.

Commenting on the latest jobless figures, Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said: "Still, the rate of decay of claims has slowed, disappointingly, and we think the first sub-1M reading won’t come until the first week of July.

"By then, the cumulative increase in claims since the virus struck will be close to 50M. Early indications for next week, based on Google search data and partial state data, suggest claims will dip to about 1,600K."