WASHINGTON, D.C. — An additional 847,000 Americans have filed for first-time unemployment assistance for the week ending Jan. 23. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected the total number of claims to reach 875,000. The most recent figure was a slight decrease from the previous week’s revised number of 914,000, but still remains significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels.
The four-week moving average was revised up by 16,250 to 868,000. The continuing claims, data for which trails a week, totaled 4.7 million claims for the week ending Jan. 16, a decrease of 203,000 from the previous week’s revised level.
Separately, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annualized rate of 4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020, which came 30 basis points below estimates from economists surveyed by Dow Jones. The GDP grew at an annualized rate of 33.4 percent in the third quarter of 2020. Overall in 2020, real GDP declined by 3.5 percent, compared with a 2.2 percent increase in 2019.