Weekly Jobless Claims Rise Another 2.981 Million for Week Ending May 9th

The U.S. Department of Labor is reporting that an additional 2.981 million Americans made their initial filing for unemployment benefits during the week ending on Saturday May 9th. A decrease of 195,000 from the previous week’s revised level. Although the numbers remain high, it’s the lowest total since the second week of March. However, over the past eight weeks more than 36.5 American’s have filed for unemployment benefits. Continuing claims, or those who have filed within at least the last two weeks, continue to climb higher, up 456,000 to 22.83 million. The insured unemployment rate, which is a simple computation of those filing claims against the total size of the workforce, rose 0.3 percentage points to 15.7%.