Over 880,000 more Americans filed new jobless claims last week

The number of Americans filing new jobless claims has come in below one million this week, the lowest level during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Labor Department on Thursday said a total of 881,000 Americans filed new jobless claims last week. This was lower than the 950,000 claims that economists had been expecting, and continuing claims also fell by 1.24 million, CNBC reports.

It's also the lowest level the weekly jobless claims have reached since the COVID-19 crisis began in the United States, NBC News reports. Last month, the number of weekly jobless claims had dipped below one million for the first time during the pandemic, but experts expressed fears that they were headed in the wrong direction after they rose above one million after that.

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Still, Bloomberg notes that Thursday's figure wasn't "directly comparable" to that of week prior due to a methodology change the Labor Department made, and according to NPR, without the new seasonal adjustment change, "state unemployment claims rose by more than 7,500." Additionally, CNN notes that almost 760,000 Americans filed for unemployment under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program, which was up from the week before.

And while the number of new jobless claims has declined, it's still historically high, The New York Times notes, as the record for most claims filed in one week prior to the pandemic was 695,000. Economic analyst Mark Hamrick noted to NBC News, "The fact remains that these are extremely elevated numbers and that we have to brace for further job loss in the coming weeks and months."