Amid the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis, unemployment claims have surged to a record high.
The Department of Labor on Thursday reported that a staggering 3.28 million people filed initial jobless claims last week, when businesses around the country were forced to lay off workers as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, CNN reports. That's more than four times higher than the previous record high of 695,000 in October 1982, per The Associated Press. The Department of Labor first began to track the data in 1967.
This is also a huge spike from the week prior, when 282,000 initial jobless claims were filed. Already, the spike in unemployment claims from last week's Labor Department report, which was for the week ending on March 14, had represented a bigger one-week jump than during the Great Recession.
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In fact, CNBC reports this number "shatters the Great Recession peak of 665,000 in March 2009."
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