Americans filed 3.8 million new jobless claims last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, pushing the six-week claims tally to 30.3 million as the coronavirus pandemic battered the economy.

The new report, which covers the week ending April 25, likely understates the total number of Americans who lost their jobs as the death toll from the disease climbed above that of the Vietnam war.


Self-employed workers who were made temporarily eligible last month for jobless benefits under the CARES Act are mostly left out of the count, as only 21 states have updated their systems to begin cutting unemployment checks to those workers. Eleven of those states implemented the program in just the past week.