Americans have filed more than 40 million jobless claims in past 10 weeks, as another 2.1 million filed for benefits last week

Americans have filed more than 40 million claims for jobless benefits in the past 10 weeks, according to new Labor Department data, laying bare a tremendous and sudden disruption in the U.S. economy that is already changing the types of jobs desperate workers are looking to fill.

About 2.1 million of those new unemployment claims were filed just last week, the federal data show, marking a slight decrease from prior weeks while still reflecting the historic toll wrought by a pandemic that has temporarily — and in some cases permanently — shuttered businesses nationwide.