Another 5.2 million Americans file for unemployment benefits

April 16 (UPI) -- Another 5.2 million Americans have filed for new unemployment benefits, the Labor Department said in its weekly report Thursday.

The new claims were filed for the week ending April 11, and add to the 16 million other Americans who'd filed the three weeks prior.

Last week's filing total was a decrease from the previous week, when 6.6 million applied for benefits. The same number of Americans had filed new claims the previous week, bringing the total to more than 18 million new claims in the last three weeks.

Millions of workers have been laid off since the beginning of March due to restrictions brought on by the coronavirus crisis. The department said last week the unemployment rate had risen to 8.2 percent.