New Hampshire jobless claims continue to decline
(The Center Square) – First-time unemployment claims in New Hampshire dropped again last week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s weekly report.
There were 501 new applications for state jobless benefits filed for the week that ended Aug. 7 – a decline of 48 from the previous week, the federal agency reported on Thursday.
Meanwhile, continuing jobless claims – which lag behind a week – totaled 5,603 in the week ending July 31, a decrease of 910 over the previous week.
The state reported 13 new claims for federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance in the week that ended Aug. 7, 15 less than the previous week, according to the report.
New Hampshire is one of 25 states that have ended participation in the PUA and other federal unemployment programs. But federal rules prevent the state from pulling the plug immediately on existing beneficiaries.
The state has distributed more than $1.8 billion in federal and state unemployment benefits to workers since March 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak began.
New Hampshire’s jobless rate remained steady at 2.9% in June, according to the New Hampshire Employment Security, one of the lowest rates in the nation.
Nationally, there were 375,000 new claims filed in the week that ended Aug. 7, a decrease of 12,000 from the previous week, according to the labor department.
Continuing claims also dropped to 2.86 million nationally for the week that ended July 31. That’s a new pandemic low, according to the federal agency.
An estimated 12 million Americans were still receiving state or federal jobless benefits in the week ending July 24, the agency reported.
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