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About 1.4 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits once again last week, new data show — a troubling sign that the nation’s recovery from the coronavirus crisis is unraveling. Workers now have filed more than 52 million initial jobless claims since layoffs spiked in mid-March, suggesting about a third of the American labor force has …
About 1.4 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits once again last week, new data show — a troubling sign that the nation’s recovery from the coronavirus crisis is unraveling.
Workers now have filed more than 52 million initial jobless claims since layoffs spiked in mid-March, suggesting about a third of the American labor force has been sidelined at some point during the pandemic.
Seasonally adjusted new filings increased last week for the first time since late March as the worst labor crisis since the Great Depression enters a precarious new phase, according to Thursday’s figures from the US Department of Labor.
A surge in coronavirus infections has forced several states to roll back reopening plans that fueled record job gains in May and June. And a $600 boost to weekly unemployment benefits under the CARES Act is set to run out after this week, delivering a big financial hit to the millions of people still out of work.
Lawmakers in Congress are still hashing out whether to extend those extra payments or potentially give jobless Americans a smaller amount of money. Republicans reportedly favor slashing them to $200 a week, an amount that would be tweaked based on state jobless benefits rates.
But even cutting payments to $400 a week “would have perceptible impact on the economy,” according to Bloomberg economists Eliza Winger and Andrew Husby. It would drive down total payments by about $22 billion a month, which is equivalent to the average monthly wage income for 5.1 million workers, they said.
