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Another 712,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week - CNN

Another 712,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week - CNN

Another 712,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week - CNN
Dec 03, 2020 1 min, 31 secs

Although that's a new low for combined first-time claims since the crisis started, the number is still higher than the peak of weekly jobless claims during the Great Recession, when they peaked at 665,000.

Continued jobless claims stood at 5.5 million, down from 6.1 million in the week before.

Meanwhile, the number of people who have exhausted their state benefits and receive aid from alternative programs, like the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, has risen once again, climbing by some 60,000 to 4.6 million in the week ended November 14.

In total, 20.2 million Americans received benefits under the various government programs in that week.

That's down about 350,000 from the prior week.

Thursday's report comes just days after the US Government Accountability Office said that the Labor Department hadn't provided an accurate estimate of the number of Americans claiming benefits.

States' backlogs are overloaded with the historically high number of applications, which is contributing to this issue.

On top of that, millions of people may not be receiving the full unemployment payments they are owed, GAO said.

Economists and lawmakers have relied on jobless claims data throughout the pandemic because its weekly release schedule is the closest to real-time economic data.

In spite of the rampant joblessness, the benefit programs created by the CARES Act in the spring are due to expire at the end of the year unless Congress acts.

"Restoring Pandemic Unemployment Compensation is particularly critical given the shocking findings in a GAO report this week that found rampant underpayment of PUA, relegating millions of federal benefits recipients to below the poverty line," said Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

Unemployed benefit recipients received an additional $600 per week on top of other benefits until the end of July through the PUC program.

It's a big week for employment data, with the government's jobs report due on Friday morning.

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