"In the week ending October 31, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 751,000", the department said in a news release. It revised upward claims in the previous week to 24 October to 758,000, putting the current week’s change in unemployment at a negative 7,000, or about 1 percent lower.
Continuous claims for the latest week showed filings from 7.29 million Americans, lower than the previous week’s number of 7.82 million. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, stood at 5 percent, down 0.3 percent from the previous week.
The United States lost more than 21 million jobs between March and April, at the height of lockdowns forced by the COVID-19. A rebound of 2.5 million jobs was logged in May and 4.8 million in June before the recovery began slowing. For all of September, there were just 661,000 jobs added.
Despite the rebound, the economic outlook for the United States remains dire with a rash of new coronavirus infections reported across a nation with 9.5 million COVID-19 cases and over 233,000 fatalities to date. New lockdowns imposed by Germany and France are also likely to dampen the global trade, putting further strain on the United States.