3.8M New Jobless Claims Push Recent Total To 30M

USA Today reports:



About 30 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits over the past six weeks, a grim marker revealing how badly the coronavirus pandemic has crippled the U.S. economy.

Roughly 3.8 million people filed for unemployment last week alone, the Labor Department said Thursday, lower than the 4.4 million who filed the week before and down from the all-time high of 6.86 million applications in late March. Jobless claims provide the best measure of layoffs across the country.

While the number of claims continues to slide, the tally is still monumental, and is building toward a projected unemployment rate of 16.4% in May that would be the highest since the Great Depression, according to Morgan Stanley.