The US Labor Department said Thursday that the weekly filing for jobless benefits in the United States was about 37,000 above the previous week, rising for the first time in nearly two months in a setback to the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
In a statement, the department said that "in the week ending June 12, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 412,000, an increase of 37,000 from the previous week's revised level."
Filing for unemployment benefits had previously fallen for seven straight weeks, bolstering hopes for labor market recovery from the COVID-19 amid a surfeit of other bullish economic data and plunging COVID-19 infection rates owing to a massive vaccination drive.
The Labor Department said there were only 559,000 job additions for all of May, at least 90,000 below economists' estimates.
The United States lost more than 21 million jobs between March and April 2020, at the height of business lockdowns forced by the coronavirus.
