WASHINGTON – Another 1.3 million Americans filed first-time jobless claims last week.

The Labor Department released those numbers Thursday morning.

It comes nearly four months after the Coronavirus pandemic started wreaking havoc on the economy.

Weekly first-time unemployment applications hit their peak in the last week of March.

Since then, those applications have been on the decline for more than three months, but unemployment is still high.

Continued claims were at more than 17.3 million for the week ending July 4 down 422,000 from the previous week. Continued claims are people who have filed claims for at least two weeks in a row.

June’s unemployment rate was 11.1 percent, the highest since World War II.