Unemployment claims top 26 million 5 weeks into pandemic

Americans filed 4.4 million jobless claims last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, pushing the five-week total of coronavirus-driven job losses to more than 26 million.

The new report, which covers the week ending April 18, lent plausibility to economists' prediction that the unemployment rate will by summer be within range of the 25 percent peak recorded in 1933 during the Great Depression.

"All else equal, job losses of this magnitude would translate into an unemployment rate of 18.3 [percent]," said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.