New Hampshire jobless claims hit new pandemic low

(The Center Square) – First-time claims for unemployment benefits in New Hampshire dropped again last week, reaching a new pandemic-era low, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s weekly report.

There were 390 new applications for state unemployment benefits filed for the week that ended Nov. 13, the federal agency reported on Thursday. That’s 133 fewer claims than the previous week.

Continuing state unemployment claims – which lag behind a week – totalled 2,348 in the week ending Nov. 6, dropping by 459 over the previous week.

The state also reported 47 new claims last week for federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program that expired two months ago. That’s 30 fewer claims than the previous week, according to the report.

PUA and other federal unemployment programs created by Congress in response to the pandemic – including a $300 per week enhanced benefit – expired on Sept. 4, but jobless workers are still filing for the benefits.

The Labor Department data only shows first-time unemployment claims that were filed for the previous week, not those that were successfully processed.

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 unemployment rate remained relatively unchanged in October at 2.9%, according to New Hampshire Employment Security.

Employers are still struggling to find workers amid a prolonged hiring crunch that economists say is holding back growth of the pandemic-battered economy.

Many businesses had hoped that the end of the federal unemployment programs would result in a boost in hiring, but that doesn’t appear to have happened.

Nationally, initial filings for unemployment insurance fell to another pandemic-era low last week, with the number of recently laid off workers falling to pre-virus levels.

There were 268,000 new jobless claims filed during the week that ended Nov. 13, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week, according to the Labor Department. That’s the lowest level for initial claims since March 14, 2020, when it was 225,000 the agency said Thursday.

Continuing unemployment claims, which lag behind a week, dropped by 129,000 to about 2 million nationally for the week that ended Nov. 6, the agency said.

Overall, more than 3.1 million Americans were still receiving state or federal jobless benefits in the week ending Oct. 30, according to the weekly report.

The labor market remains tight nationally. An estimated 4.4 million workers – about 3% of the workforce – quit their jobs in September, as job openings hovered near record levels, according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report.

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