1.9 million Americans filed for unemployment last week

Another roughly 1.9 million people filed for unemployment last week, the Department of Labor said on Thursday.

The big picture: The coronavirus pandemic is still putting a historic strain on the labor market, though the pace of unemployment applications continues to slow.

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• The number of jobless applications has steadily declined after peaking at a high of 6.9 million in late March. For comparison, the record number of filings before the pandemic was set in 1982, when 695,000 people filed for unemployment.
• The headline figure also doesn’t include people who filed for unemployment under a new program created by the CARES Act that extends benefits to gig and self-employed workers.

Between the lines: State labor departments across the country have been overwhelmed by the never-before-seen wave of unemployment filings.

• Bloomberg reported this week that almost one-third of unemployment benefits that were supposed to be paid out to workers hadn’t arrived yet.

What’s next: The May jobs report — out Friday morning — will give a better picture of how many workers were out of a job last month.

• The unemployment rate is estimated to spike to 19.8%.

The bottom line: A historically high number of Americans are still applying for jobless ai, at the same time that nationwide protests against systemic racism and police brutality continue to mount following George Floyd’s death.

Source: https://www.axios.com/unemployment-filings-coronavirus-dc3a2dc8-311b-4294-bd79-b72d370205c2.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Courtenay Brown

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