Another 5.2 Million Americans File for Unemployment as COVID-19 Pandemic Continues to Take Toll

WASHINGTON, D.C. — An estimated 5.2 million people filed for first-time unemployment in the week ending April 11, the U.S. Department of Labor reports. COVID-19 has continued to take a toll on the daily lives of almost every American and those around the world as local, state and federal governments issue stay-at-home orders and urge non-essential businesses to close to the public. Over the past four weeks, the total number of Americans filing for unemployment has exceeded 22 million, according to the Department of Labor. To put the pandemic’s swift movement through the economy into perspective, there were 24.4 million jobs created over the past 11 years since the Great Recession, according to the Department of Labor. The latest weekly unemployment claims figure is down from 6.6 million the prior week. As of this writing, there were 31,015 deaths and 640,291 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).