Some 1.3Mln Americans File 1st Time Jobless Claims Last Week Amid Pandemic - Labor Dept.

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 09th July, 2020) Some 1.3 million more Americans filed for first-time unemployment claims last week as a new wave of novel coronavirus infections hit the world's largest economy, the US Labor Department said in a release on Thursday.

"In the week ending July 4, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 1,314,000," the release said.

Last week's filings amounted to 1.4 million and came on top of previous filings of nearly 48.

5 million over 15 weeks.

The percentage of jobless Americans, defined by the Labor Department as the "advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate," stood at 12.4 percent for the week ending July 4.

The number of continuing jobless claims - accounting for people who have not found work since filing first-time claims - dipped to 18.1 million for the week that ended on June 27. The continuing jobless claims data typically lags the headline jobless claims number by a week.