1.2 million people filed new unemployment claims last week


America's record unemployment numbers have hit a roadblock in their recovery.
Just under 1.2 million people filed new unemployment claims in the past week, Labor Department numbers released Thursday indicate. This marks the 20th straight week where new unemployment claims topped 1 million, and continues a streak of new unemployment numbers only barely recovering from the week before.
Thursday's numbers beat economists' expectations of 1.4 million new claims filed. Still, 16 million Americans are continuing to receive unemployment insurance, less than 800,000 down from the week before. A massive 54 million Americans have claimed unemployment since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. And as of last Friday, both new filers and those still receiving benefits won't get the $600/week boost in unemployment insurance Congress instituted at the beginning of the pandemic, or any unemployment boost at all.
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Some of these 1.2 million claims can likely be attributed to filing backlogs. But The Washington Post's Heather Long suggests it's painting another picture: "A lot of layoffs are becoming permanent at this point," leading to a holdup in America's employment recovery. Kathryn Krawczyk
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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.
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