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Another 1.3 Million US Workers File for Jobless Benefits

VOA News

   Another 1.3 million laid-off U.S. workers filed for unemployment
   compensation last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, as the
   world's biggest economy struggles in the face of a surging number of
   new coronavirus cases.

   It was the 17th straight week that the number of benefit claims had
   dropped, but only by 10,000 in the week ending July 11 from the
   previous week. The single-week high of 6.9 million claims came in
   March, but the recent four-week rolling average of nearly 1.4 million
   claims a week remains historically high.

   In all, the government said about 17.3 million workers remain
   unemployed even as millions of workers have returned to their jobs. A
   total of 51 million workers have collected jobless benefits at some
   point in the last four months.

   The unemployment benefit claim figures since mid-March have been
   staggering, easily topping the 695,000 total in one week in 1982 that
   had been the highest on record until the coronavirus pandemic swept
   into the United States.

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