Another 2.4 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week because the number of workers ruled out by the coronavirus crisis reached 38 million, according to new federal data.
That shows nearly a quarter of the US workforce has tried to join the country’s unemployment list in the past nine weeks when the pandemic struck the global economy.
Economists expect the US Department of Labor to report 2.4 million claims for the past week. The FBI also revised the previous week’s total to 2.6 million from around 3 million.
While the total weekly initial jobless claims have been steadily declining since the end of March, seasonally adjusted figures remain high because states are overwhelmed through many applications.
But the number of people filing claims for unemployment benefits jumped to more than 25 million in the week ending May 9, the FBI said, suggesting that many workers had not returned to their jobs since being laid off or abandoned amid a lockdown aimed at limiting coronaviruses.
The latest jobless claims are filed in the same week as the FBI’s monthly employment survey which will be used to produce a closely watched employment report for May. The April survey showed unemployment surged to a record 14.7 percent as the economy lost more than 20 million jobs, the worst loss since the Great Depression.
With Post cable
