U.S. Unemployment Claims Drop but Labor Market Recovery Is Unclear

U.S. jobless claims fell for the week ending August 29, but seasonal adjustments make it unclear for how the labor market is actually doing amid the pandemic, according to Bloomberg. Unadjusted figures show California has greatly contributed to both an uptick in national unemployment claims and an increase in applications under the separate federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. In general, the latest figures suggest gains in the still-depressed labor market are slow and uneven. On Wednesday, United Airlines and Ford Motor Co. announced layoffs with hundreds of thousands of job cuts. “This is just really more of a catch-up to reality,” chief U.S. financial economist at Jefferies, Aneta Markowska, said of the decline in seasonally adjusted claims.