Washington DC, April 30: Around 3.8 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week amid coronavirus outbreak in the in the United States. According to reports, until now, 30 million Americans sought unemployment benefits in six weeks. The US Labour Department released the latest figures on Thursday, which showed that the number of people applying unemployment benefits declined for the fourth consecutive week. Virus Pushes US Unemployment Toward Highest Since Depression.

As of Tuesday the state had received more than 1.9 million claims and processed just over 664,000, reported The Guardian. The administration claimed that the pace of lay-off has slowed down as states of the US begin to open up for business after the lockdown. The commerce department of the US on Tuesday announced that the economy of the country shrank by 4.8 percent in the first three months of this year. Unemployment in USA: Jobless Rate to Rise to a Record 13% in June, 14.4 Million Jobs to be Lost in Coming Months, Predicts Wall Street Journal.

In the week ending April 18, the number of people filing for US unemployment benefits decreased by 810,000 to 4.4 million, Xinhua news agency quoted the Bureau as saying on Thursday. According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics's semiannual Global Economics Prospects outlook released earlier this month, the US output is expected to shrink by 8.0 per cent in 2020, and the unemployment rate will probably peak around 20 per cent in the early summer.

The United States is the worst-hit country by coronavirus. Over one million people have contracted the deadly virus until now. The death toll in the US also crossed 60,000. Currently, there are more than 850,000 actives cases in the country. Globally, the number of positive cases crossed three million with over 228,000 deaths.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 30, 2020 06:56 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).