Almost 43 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits

4years ago

US news, US news.

In the US, more than a quarter of the labor force, 42.6 million people have claimed benefits since the pandemic began ravaging the US labor market.

According to the US Department of Labor, another 1.9 million workers filed for initial unemployment aid last week.

Claims decreased from the previous week, a trend that has held for the past ten weeks, ever since first-time claims peaked at 6.9 million in the last week of March.

People who have filed benefits for at least two weeks in a row stood at 21.5 million. This number unexpectedly increased slightly from the week prior.

Continuing claims decreased n the previous week, as more people are returning to work and the economy is reopening. However, as last week's increase proves, the progress is drastically slow. And moving faster to reopen could increase the threat of spreading COVID-19.

America's unemployment rate is expected to reach nearly 20% in March, with 28.5 million jobs eliminated over the past two months. That's an unemployment rate not recorded since the Great Depression, and the highest monthly level since the data collection began in 1948.