7-Week Jobless Claims Total Hits 33.5 Million The most recent totals were released by the Labor Department on Thursday.
In addition to the staggering seven-week total of claims, it revealed that first-time filings for last week exceeded 3.17 million.
Economists had expected an increase of 3.05 million.
Paul Ashworth, Capital Economics, via NBC News While bleak, last week's first-time filers did decrease from the week before, which saw a total of 3.846 million.
It was also the lowest unemployment filings since the coronavirus was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 14.
Some economists are hopeful that first-time filer numbers will dip below one million by the beginning of June.
