"In the week ending May 16, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 2,438,000," the department said in a news release, showing, however, that the figure had declined from the previous week's near 3 million filings.
In late-April, the United States Department of Labor reported that 26.5 million people had filed for initial unemployment claims since mid-March after losing their jobs amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, putting an end to over 100 months of record job growth.
At the same time, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a press briefing earlier that the economic impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic will be as much as $9 trillion.
As of Thursday, the US has more than 1.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases with the death toll surpassing 93,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University.