The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits in the past three weeks has exceeded 15 million.
According to Reuters, the new weekly requests exceeded six million for the second time in a row last week, while strict measures to control the country's new Corona virus led to a near cessation of activity.
The US Department of Labor said that new requests for unemployment benefits in the week ending April 4 totaled 6.6 million, a modest decrease from the revised figure of 6.87 million in the previous week.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected the number of jobless claims to reach 5.25 million new in the latest week, with estimates ranging to a high of 9.295 million.
The weekly jobless claims report released by the Labor Ministry on Thursday will boost economists' expectations for up to 20 million jobs in April. The government announced last week that the economy had lost 701,000 jobs in March. This is the biggest job loss since the Great Depression and ended the longest employment boom in American history that started in late 2010.
