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Labor Market Recovery Hits a Potentially Worrying Plateau
July 20, 2020
The labor market saw a faster-than-expected rebound between March and June. Weekly applications for unemployment benefits spiked when the virus forced the economy to shut down.
The massive 6.8 million weekly applicants steadily fell week after week until June, when the number of hit 1.5 million. Since then, the number has diminished only gradually.
There were 1.3 million applications in the week ending July 11, just 10,000 fewer than the week before.
Some economists see this as a worrying sign that the labor market’s recovery has stalled in the face of increasing cases of the virus throughout the country, and that the road to pre-pandemic levels of unemployment may be longer than they had hoped.
