Another 1.3 million Americans filed for first-time unemployment claims last week, the Labor Department said on Thursday, as a new wave of coronavirus infections continued to overwhelm the world's largest economy that just emerged from lockdowns two months ago
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th July, 2020) Another 1.3 million Americans filed for first-time unemployment claims last week, the Labor Department said on Thursday, as a new wave of coronavirus infections continued to overwhelm the world's largest economy that just emerged from lockdowns two months ago.
"In the week ending July 11, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 1,300,000," the department said in a news release. Last week's filings also amounted to around 1.3 million and came on top of previous filings of nearly 50 million over 16 weeks.
The percentage of jobless Americans, defined by the Labor Department as the "advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate," was at 11.9 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 fell below the 18 million mark but remained significantly high at 17.3 million for the week that ended July 4. The continuing jobless claims data typically lags the headline jobless claims number by a week.
"The COVID-19 virus continues to impact the number of initial claims and insured unemployment," the Labor Department said in the news release.
The United States reported more than 66,000 new cases of coronavirus on Wednesday in a so-called "second-wave" of the US COVID-19 outbreak, data published by the Johns Hopkins University showed.
Top US pandemics expert Anthony Fauci said recently the daily case growth could reach 100,000 without proper social-distancing and other safety measures.
Nearly 3.5 million Americans have already been infected by the COVID-19, with a death toll reaching almost 140,000. A new model by the University of Washington also predicts 200,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by Oct. 1, casting further doubts on economic reopening from lockdowns.
The US economy shrank 5 percent in the first three months of 2020 for its sharpest decline since the Great Recession of 2008/09, as most of the 50 states in the country went into lockdown to stem the outbreak of the virus. While most businesses have reopened over the past two months, economists still warn of a double-digit recession by the second quarter meaning job losses could continue.
