The Federal Labour Department announced that the number of new jobless claims filed last week (May 14-20) was 229,000. Although it increased by 4,000 from the previous week, it was far less than the expert forecast (245,000) compiled by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Given that the number of claims filed last week was revised down to 225,000 from the previously announced 242,000, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits remains at a historically low level. The number of unemployment benefits claims, which showed an upward trend in April, fell back to the low 200,000 range because large-scale fraudulent claims were discovered in the state of Massachusetts and elsewhere.
The sharp downward revision in the number of claims last week is also a result of the Massachusetts crackdown. Previously, the state of Massachusetts launched a massive crackdown, saying that there was an attempt to apply for new unemployment benefits with stolen personal information or fraudulently obtain unemployment benefits using someone else’s account.
The number of “continued unemployment benefits” claims, which are claims for unemployment benefits for at least two weeks, also fell by 5,000 to 1,794,000.
The Wall Street estimate is 1.8 million. Media such as the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) analysed that these results suggest that the labour market is still in a strong state. The fact that unemployment claims have hardly risen since the unemployment rate hit 3.4% last month, the lowest level in 54 years, is expected to complicate the calculations of the Federal Reserve at the crossroads of monetary policy.
For the Fed, this is because it is a factor that increases pressure to raise interest rates. The Federal Reserve, which has raised interest rates 10 times in a row until this month, is facing a tight confrontation between the theory of freezing and the theory of additional hikes over the decision of the base rate with the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on the 13th and 14th of June.