Washington – Nearly 3.2 million people applied for unemployment insurance in the United States last week as the coronavirus forced thousands of businesses and businesses to close in the country’s worst economic catastrophe in decades, the government reported Thursday.
With this figure, some 33.5 million people have applied for unemployment insurance in the last seven weeks since the pandemic worsened. In February the unemployment rate was 3.5%, the lowest in 50 years.
Most nonessential companies remain closed, although many states in the United States are already beginning to ease confinement restrictions for some economic sectors despite concerns that a second wave of COVID-19 infections will emerge.
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In addition to Thursday’s weekly report, the government will release its April monthly report on Friday where economists forecast at least 21 million lost jobs and an unemployment rate of 16% or higher, the highest rate since the Great Depression of the 1990s. 1930.
