SAN JOSE, Calif. _ The pace of unemployment claims being filed in California has slowed dramatically amid the economic fallout unleashed by the coronavirus, punctuated by a sharp decrease in applications for jobless benefits last week, federal officials reported Thursday.
Despite the improvement, Gov. Gavin Newsom predicted that the unemployment rate will peak at a grim milestone: one-fourth _ or more _ of the state's workers will end up jobless.
"We are projecting that unemployment will peak north of 24.5 percent," Gov. Newsom said during a news briefing on Thursday to discuss the state's upcoming budget and currently bleak economic landscape. "This is simply without precedent."
About 214,000 workers in California filed first-time claims for unemployment benefits during the week that ended on May 9, compared with 316,300 who applied in the week ending on May 2, a report from the U.S. Labor Department showed.
That equated to a 32.3% decrease in the filings for the most recent week compared to the amount in the prior week.
First-time unemployment claims in the United States totaled 2.98 million during the week ending May 9, down 6% from the 3.18 million in jobless claims for the week ending May 2, the Labor Department reported.
An array of business shutdowns orchestrated and mandated by state and local government officials has erased the jobs of millions of workers at a record pace not seen since the Great Depression.
By some measures, about 23% of California's workers have lost their jobs since business shutdowns began in mid-March.
The state's Employment Development Department has received about 4.26 million unemployment claims starting with the week that ended March 14, according to numbers this news organization culled from the Labor Department's reports.
Multiple data points suggest the pace of unemployment claims has slowed drastically in California since weekly jobless filings climbed to a dismal pinnacle of 1.06 million for the week that ended on March 28.
Using a benchmark of a moving average, which smooths out the volatility in the reports, unemployment claims in California have averaged 346,000 a week for the most recent four weeks. During the four-week period that ended on May 2, the per-week average was 456,400.
Despite the improvement for California, the most recent unemployment numbers are in stark contrast to the pace of jobless claims that were filed prior to the coronavirus-linked business shutdowns.
During the week that ended on March 7, California unemployment claims were averaging around 41,000 a week. That means the most recent week's totals were about five times as great as the weekly claims in early March. The current pace of unemployment also towers above the trends for January and February of this year.
Over the last two months, about 4.2 million California workers have filed for jobless benefits. Over a similar eight-week period, an estimated 36 million U.S. workers have filed first-time unemployment claims.
