Washington, Apr 2 (UNI) Around 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment claims last week, doubling the previous week’s all-time high, as the impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic grew from the lockdown upon US businesses, the Labor Department said in its weekly jobless claims report on Thursday.
The department added 24,000 claims to the previous week’s tally to bring the final number for that week ended March 21 to 3,307,000, according to a BBC report.
“The COVID-19 virus continues to impact the number of initial claims. Nearly every state providing comments cited the COVID-19 virus,” the report said. “States continued to identify increases related to the services industries broadly, again led by accommodation and food services.”