The Labor Department reports 4.427 million more Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits during the week ending April 18, down from a revised 5.245 million who filed initial claims the previous week.
The total number of new unemployment claims since the numbers first spiked five weeks ago is now 26 million.
The Labor Department estimates that pushes the advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate to 11.0%.
Its official April unemployment number will be released during the first week of May.
On an unadjusted basis, first-time jobless claims last week totaled 4.268 million.
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On a not seasonally adjusted basis, the number of initial jobless claims in D.C., Maryland and Virginia combined fell by 37,843 from the previous week, but still totaled 139,654.
Here are the unadjusted initial jobless claims for D.C., Maryland and Virginia during the week ending April 18:
District of Columbia
Week ending April 18: 8,591
Week ending April 11: 9,974
Maryland:
Week ending April 18: 46,676
Week ending April 11: 62,904
Virginia:
Week ending April 18: 84,387
Week ending April 11: 104,619
Nationally, more than 4.4 million laid-off workers applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week, the government said Thursday.
The graphics below show how the nation has been affected by the job losses connected to the coronavirus pandemic.