2.1M New Jobless Claims, 40.7M Over Last Ten Weeks

USA Today reports:



About 2.1 million Americans filed initial unemployment benefit claims last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. In just ten weeks, 40.7 million have sought jobless benefits that represent the nation’s most reliable gauge of layoffs.

A record 20.5 million jobs were lost in April, according to the Labor Department, spiking the unemployment rate to 14.7%, the highest since the Great Depression and four times the 3.5% unemployment rate reported in February, which represented a 50-year low.