2.4M claimed jobless benefits last week, bringing total to nearly 39M since mid-March
by Jay Heflin
| May 21, 2020 08:32 AM
The number of jobless workers newly applying for unemployment benefits last week was 2.4 million, the Labor Department reported on Thursday.
Economists had projected 2.4 million new jobless claims.
The number of workers seeking aid remains historically high but has dropped considerably from the nearly 7 million claims that were filed the week ending March 28. Still, losing millions of jobs a week, for weeks at a time, was unheard of before the pandemic, and some economists expected that jobless claims would drop more precipitously. Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote on Wednesday that economists have become “less hopeful of a quick drop in jobless claims below the one million mark.â€
Since the economy halted in mid-March to slow the spread of the coronavirus, nearly 39 million workers have filed for unemployment benefits, an unprecedented figure since the federal government began tracking unemployment in the 1930s.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2-4m-claimed-jobless-benefits-last-week-bringing-total-to-nearly-39m-since-mid-march
