Natural State News

Primary unemployment cases in Arkansas dropped compared with the week preceding it, the U.S. Department of Labor announced in a news release May 24.

The Paris Express reports that new cases, which are said to be a substitute for layoffs, dropped significantly to 2,033 in the week of May 15. Those numbers are down from 2,791. The numbers were recorded on the week before May 15, the Labor Department said in the release.

Moreover, there were 11,427 new cases filed in Arkansas at the same time last year.

Meanwhile, U.S. unemployment claims have maintained their uniform decline in recent weeks as claims dropped to their lowest numbers since the dawn the COVID-19 pandemic.

The official number of U.S. unemployment claims as a whole has dropped to 444,000 over the last week alone, Rueters reports. As a whole, these numbers are down by 34,000 joblessness claims from a total of 478,000 from the week before. The numbers are recorded on a seasonally adjusted basis and are expected to drop as the pandemic becomes more of a memory.

New unemployment claims last week in Arkansas saw a 27% drop to 2,033 compared to the previous week following Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s decision to opt out of the federal unemployment benefits increases.

Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Bank, said a steady decline in weekly unemployment claims can be a catalyst for improvement in the labor market, Paris Express reported.

A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that two-thirds of workers who were laid off during the pandemic were making more on unemployment than they were at their jobs with the increased federal benefits. Arkansas has since opted out of the pandemic federal unemployment programs, according to the Sentinel-Record.

A University of Chicago study found that states that cut the amount of unemployment benefit recipients can account for as much as 75% of increased job growth following the changes.