Maine jobless claims continue to drop

(The Center Square) – New claims for unemployment benefits in Maine dropped last week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s weekly report.There were 815 new applications for state unemployment benefits filed for the week that ended Nov. 27, the federal agency reported on Thursday. That’s 121 fewer than the previous week.Continuing state unemployment claims – which lag behind a week – totaled 4,781 in the week ending Nov. 20. That’s 107 fewer than the previous week.Meanwhile new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program for jobless workers who don’t qualify for state benefits, continued to decline last week. There were 17 new PUA claims, six fewer 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 claims for benefits.The Labor Department data only shows first-time unemployment claims that were filed for the previous week, not those that were successfully processed.Maine has distributed more than $2.49 billion in state and federal jobless benefits to nearly 400,000 jobless workers during the pandemic, according to state data.The state’s unemployment rate remained largely unchanged at 4.9% in October, according to the Maine Department of Labor.There were 613,700 seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs in October, mostly in the manufacturing, leisure and hospitality sectors, the agency said.Meanwhile, the number of unemployed workers remained largely unchanged from September to October with 33,100 job seekers, the agency reported. Employers are still struggling to find workers amid a prolonged hiring crunch that economists say is holding back growth of the pandemic-battered economy.Nationally, initial filings for unemployment insurance checked up slightly in the previous week despite a steadily improving job market.There were 222,000 new jobless claims filed during the week that ended Nov. 27, an increase of 28,000 from the previous week, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Continuing unemployment claims, which lag behind a week, dropped by 107,000 to about 1.95 million nationally for the week that ended Nov. 20, the agency said.Overall, more than 2.3 million Americans were still receiving state or federal jobless benefits in the week ending Nov. 13, according to the weekly report.

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