U.S. workers filed 4.4 million first-time claims for unemployment benefits in the week ended April 18, bringing the five-week jobless worker total to 26.5 million since the start of the coronavirus impact March 14.
The U.S. Labor Department in its weekly report Thursday said initial seasonally adjusted jobless claims in the week ended April 18 were down 810,000 from the prior week’s revised level of 5.2 million.
More than 8 million restaurant employees have already been laid off or furloughed, the National Restaurant Association said in an assessment of the impact of state and city closures to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. The employment toll was tallied from an association survey of more than 6,500 restaurant operators conducted April 10 to April 16.
“Two out of three restaurant employees have lost their jobs,” the association said Monday.
The Labor Department said the advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 11%, an increase of 2.8 percentage points from the previous week's unrevised rate.
“This marks the highest level of the seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate in the history of the seasonally adjusted series,” the department noted.
The department also broke out initial claims by state for the week of April 11:
The largest increases were in:
- Colorado, up 58,246
- New York, up 50,250
- Missouri, up 10,668
- Florida, up 10,534
- North Carolina, up 2,733
The largest declines in initial claims for the week ended April 11 were in:
- California, down 263,342
- Michigan, down 166,347
- New Jersey, down 73,416
- Georgia, down 70,551
- Ohio, down 66,874
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Contact Ron Ruggless at Ronald.Ruggless@Informacom
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