WASHINGTON, D.C. — A total of 444,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment insurance assistance for the week that ended May 15, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Thursday. These claims were a decrease of 34,000 from last week’s revised unemployment claims of 478,000 and were the fewest that have been registered since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 14, 2020, claims totaled 225,500.
This week’s claims were slightly better than the Dow Jones estimate of 452,000, according to CNBC. Continuing claims, which lags a week, increased by 111,000 to 3.75 million.
Approximately 1.8 million people a day receive the COVID-19 vaccine, and less people are getting pandemic-related governmental assistance. Governmental assistance packages related to the pandemic are scheduled to expire in September, according to CNBC.