Jobless Claims Are Down, but Tensions Remain in COVID Recovery

Jobless claims are at their lowest levels since the start of the pandemic; 310,000 people filed first-time claims last week, down roughly 95 percent from a peak of 6.1 million when the COVID shutdowns were at their worst.

The economic recovery is caught in a tug-of-war. On one side, COVID’s delta variant is slowing the recovery, as is the transformation of vaccines and masks into culture war issues. On the other hand, economic fundamentals are in mostly good shape, aside from inflation. People are able to find work when they feel it is safe to, as shown in the all-time record 10.9 million job openings available right now. This back-and-forth tension will likely continue for as long as the delta variant or similarly harmful future COVID variants are widespread.

This week’s jobless claims were a swing to the good. The new school year has begun, and in most places, schools are back to in-person classes. This is freeing up a lot of parents who wanted to work, and felt safe doing so, but needed to stay home during last school year’s experiment in remote schooling.

Over the next several weeks, jobless claims may also decline as unemployment benefit extensions expire, prompting more people to reenter the workforce. Economists disagree over how large this effect will be, but no one seriously argues that unemployment benefit extensions have zero effect on people’s incentives to work or not. Whether this incentive effect will be strong enough to overcome delta variant fears remains to be seen.

As Congress follows up its trillion-dollar infrastructure plan with a $3.5 reconciliation bill and then a roughly $6 trillion budget, growth and employment could slow in the medium to long term as more resources get diverted to politicized spending projects, regulatory compliance, and paying off record levels of government debt.