More than a million Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week, and Washingtonians are still having trouble getting their benefit checks.
The unemployment picture continues to be grim across the country. More than a million Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week, and people in Washington are still having trouble getting their benefit checks.
Jobless payment delays have had ‘disastrous collateral consequences’
This marks 17 straight weeks that a million people have filed for first-time benefits in the U. S. The official number is 1.3 million, down slightly from the week before. The national unemployment rate now sit at just under 12%.
CBS News Business Analyst Jill Schlesinger said this continues to be unprecedented.
“Before the pandemic, the all-time high for weekly claims was 695,000 that was during the recession in 1982,” she said.
And this latest figure doesn’t include jobs lost in the recent steps back in opening the economy as the nation deals with new increases in COVID-19 cases.
