US Job Losses From COVID-19 Reaching Nearly 41Mln With Over 2Mln New Claims - Labor Dept.

Some 2.1 million more Americans filed for first-time unemployment claims last week, the Labor Department said on Thursday, bringing the total number of US job losses from the COVID-19 pandemic to around 41 million

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 28th May, 2020) Some 2.1 million more Americans filed for first-time unemployment claims last week, the Labor Department said on Thursday, bringing the total number of US job losses from the COVID-19 pandemic to around 41 million.

"In the week ending May 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 2,123,000," the department said in a press release.

However, US unemployment claims had declined from the previous week's 2.4 million filings.

The department previously released data showing around 36 million Americans had filed for first-time unemployment benefits over eight weeks as most non-essential businesses in the United States were shuttered to limit the impact of the coronavirus.

The largest increases in initial jobless claims for the week ending May 23 were in California, the most-populous US state which still had some sectors of its economy under lockdown. It saw an increase of 31,764 in claims from the previous week.

With the latest jobless claims filings, the US unemployment stands at 14.5 percent, down 2.6 percentage points from the previous week's revised rate, the Labor Department said.