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Filings for unemployment insurance claims totaled 1.877 million last week in a sign both that the worst is over for the coronavirus-related jobs crisis but that the level of unemployment remains stubbornly high. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for 1.775 million new claims. The total nevertheless represented a decline from the previous week’s upwardly revised total of 2.126 million. Filings under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program totaled 623,073. (Cox, 6/4)

For 11 weeks in a row, jobless claims have been in the millions. Before the pandemic, the labor department had never recorded a single week of jobless claims over a million. Claims again fell from the previous week, a trend that has held for the past ten weeks, ever since first-time claims peaked at 6.9 million in the last week of March. (Tappe, 6/4)

That doesn’t mean the United States has any less deep of a hole to dig itself out of. The weekly numbers on Thursday are still more than double the pre-coronavirus record of 695,000 set in October 1982, as they have been every week since mid-March this year. More than 40 million people have applied for unemployment benefits during the pandemic, with roughly 21.5 million continuing to receive them, previously unimaginable figures that wiped out a job market that saw unemployment at historic lows as recently as February. That number grew slightly the last week of May after dipping the week before, indicating that more people claimed unemployment for the first time than those who went back to work or stopped claiming for other reasons. (Rosenberg and Long, 6/4)

The job market is “crawling out of the hole now,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities. “We do have the worst behind us,” he said. At the same time, Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the weekly claims “are not falling as fast as I’d like them to fall or thought they would be falling.” “Let’s not kid ourselves,” he added. “This is still an astonishing rate of layoffs.” (6/4)

“The forthcoming May jobs report will amount to a shocking sequel to the April horror story,” wrote Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst for Bankrate. “It is likely to add further economic insult to the injury already established with the jobless rate. . . Millions more are expected to fall off of payrolls.” (6/4)

According to the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, the government paid out $71.5 billion in jobless benefits during the first three weeks of May. That's 48% more than it paid in the whole month of April. Stephen Pingle, who lost his job stringing Internet cable in Nashville, waited seven weeks before receiving his first unemployment payment. "It was a huge relief," Pingle said. "It felt like in one day going from the poorest I'd ever been to the richest I'd ever been." (Horsely, 6/4)

States across the country are being hit by unemployment-benefit fraud that could amount to billions of lost dollars, reflecting the vulnerabilities that workers and governments face in the midst of historically high levels of jobless claims related to the coronavirus pandemic. In recent days, states including North Dakota, Maine and Pennsylvania have said they detected cases or attempts of unemployment fraud, largely tied to identity theft. (Chaney, 6/3)

Forty million Americans are unemployed and extra unemployment benefits expire at the end of next month. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are grappling with deep ideological divisions over what to do with the popular program in the middle of a pandemic and an election year. Most Republicans have roundly rejected the House Democrats’ approach of extending a $600 weekly boost to unemployment checks though January 2021, and some say the enhanced benefits may need to end altogether. (Everett, 6/4)

In the weeks since the coronavirus pandemic emptied her calendar of weddings, fundraisers and corporate events, Anita Ellis still rises at 6 a.m. to make her customary triple espresso, then climbs back into bed and refreshes her email. She checks in with fellow event planners, all of whom are eager for any word from longtime clients, and scans the Web for hints as to the future of her small business, Avalon Caterers, based in Alexandria, Va. (Siegel, 6/3)