Washington — Millions more Americans filed claims for unemployment benefits last week, suggesting that layoffs are spreading to industries that were not initially directly affected by business closures and disruptions related to the coronavirus.

The US labour department’s weekly jobless claims report on Thursday followed news on Wednesday that the economy. in the first quarter. suffered its sharpest contraction since the Great Depression. This ended the longest expansion in the US’s history as the economy reels from nationwide lockdowns to slow the spread of Covid-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus...

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