The U.S. Department of Labor released Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report for the week ending April 4^th. In the past three weeks, about 16.8 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance due to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis.

In the week ending April 4^th, the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits, known as jobless claims, reached to a seasonally adjusted level of 6,606,000, following a revised 6,867,000 claims in the previous week. It is the third straight week that jobless claims were counted in the magnitude of millions. This week’s figure brings the total jobless claims to about 16.8 million over the past three weeks, surpassing the total jobless claims of 11.3 million in 2019. The four-week moving average was 4,265,500, an increase of 1,598,750 from the previous week’ revised average.

Meanwhile, the seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate increased by 3.0 percentage points to 5.1% for the week ending March 28^th. The number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment increased to 7,455,000 during the week ending March 28^th . from a revised level of 3,059,000 in the previous week. It marks the highest level of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment in the history of the seasonally adjusted series.

The U.S. Department of Labor also released the monthly report providing information about the characteristics of Unemployment Insurance (UI) claimants by industry.

Tags: coronavirus, COVID-19, initial claims, insured unemployment rate, jobless claims