Another wave of 6.6 million American workers filed first-time unemployment claims for the week ending April 4, bringing the cumulative total to an astonishing 16 million over the past three weeks.
For the week ending March 21, 3.3 million people filed new unemployment claims, easily shattering the previous record set in 1982 of 695,000. Last week, that astounding figure doubled, as 6.6 million people filed claims for the week ending March 28 — a figure that was revised upward to 6.9 million in the new release.
Thursday’s figure was at the high end of analyst estimates, which ranged from 4.5 million to 7 million.
