First-time New Hampshire jobless claims drop again

(The Center Square) – First-time unemployment claims in New Hampshire receded again last week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s weekly report.

There were 343 new applications for state jobless benefits filed for the week that ended Oct. 2 – 93 fewer claims than the previous week, the federal agency reported on Thursday.

Meanwhile, continuing state unemployment claims – which lag behind a week – totaled 2,799 in the week ending Sept. 25, a decrease of 427 over the previous week.

The state reported 23 new claims for federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance for the week of Oct. 2, nine more 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 because unemployment claims are filed for the preceding week, many of the requests for PUA and other federal benefits were made before the programs expired.

Likewise, 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 jobless rate went up slightly to 3% in August – but is still one of the lowest rates in the nation, according to the New Hampshire Employment Security,

Nationally, there were 326,000 new claims filed in the week that ended Oct. 2, a decrease of 38,000 from the previous week, according to the labor department.

Continuing unemployment claims, which lag behind a week, dropped by 97,000 to more than 2.7 million nationally for the week that ended Sept. 25, the agency said.

More than 4.1 million Americans were still receiving state or federal jobless benefits in the week ending Sept. 18, the agency reported. That’s more than 850,000 less than the previous week.

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