Another 151,752 applications, not seasonally adjusted, were filed under a special pandemic aid program for freelance workers, about 85,000 less than the prior week.
The troublesome signs for the labor market were hardly limited to the underwhelming headline number, which showed the weakest job growth since the recovery began from the swoon induced by the COVID-19 outbreak earlier this year.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said McConnell's call for a smaller bill "doesn't appeal to me at all, because they still have not agreed to crush the virus."