6.65 million workers filed new claims for jobless benefits last week, 10 times the record set in '82
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For the past several years, analysts have usually only glanced at the weekly number of new claims for unemployment benefits. These have remained historically low—just a bit above 200,000. The focus instead has been on the monthly report from the Bureau6.65 million workers filed new claims for jobless benefits last week, 10 times the record set in '82
For the past several years, analysts have usually only glanced at the weekly number of new claims for unemployment benefits. These have remained historically low—just a bit above 200,000. The focus instead has been on the monthly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the growth in new jobs that began under President Barack Obama continued for 113 consecutive months. But as the first economic impacts of the coronavirus took hold, new benefit claims soared by 70,000 three weeks ago, hit a record-shattering 3.28 million two weeks ago, and last week the Labor Department announced today, rocketed another 6.65 million. That’s almost 10 times the record of 695,000 new claims set one week late in the recession of 1982. Add that combined total of nearly 10 million people to the 5.8 million already out-of-work, and it pushes the unemployment rate from 3.5% to 9.5%. But that’s not what the BLS report will show Friday. More about that in moment. Read more