Initial weekly US jobless claims fall only slightly
Joblessness in the US continued retreating last week, but only just.
According to the Department of Labor, initial unemployment claims fell by 58,000 over the week ending on 13 June to reach 1.508m (consensus: 1.3m).
The four-week moving average meanwhile, which aims to smooth out the variations in the data from one week to the next, fell by 234,500 to 1.774m.
Secondary unemployment claims, those which are not being filed for the first time and linked to the week before, or that ending on 6 June, fell by only 62,000 to 20.554m.
However, the tally for the week ending on 30 May was revised down by 323,000 to 20.606m.
"It's not clear why claims are still so high; is it the initial shock still working its way up through businesses away from the consumer-facing jobs lost in the first wave, or is it businesses which thought they could survive now throwing in the towel, or both? Either way, these are disappointing numbers and serve to emphasize that a full recovery is going to take a long time," said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.