Another 5.2 million Americans have filed for new unemployment benefits, the Labor Department said in its weekly report Thursday.

The new claims were filed for the week ending April 11, and add to the 16 million other Americans who’d filed the three weeks prior.

Last week’s filing total was a decrease from the previous week, when 6.6 million applied for benefits. The same number of Americans had filed new claims the previous week, bringing the total to more than 18 million new claims in the last three weeks.

Millions of workers have been laid off since the beginning of March due to restrictions brought on by the coronavirus crisis. The department said last week the unemployment rate had risen to 8.2 percent.

Copyright 2020 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI’s prior written consent.

—-

This content is published through a licensing agreement with Acquire Media using its NewsEdge technology.

Rating: 3.0/5. From 2 votes.
Please wait...