Almost 5 million Americans continued to receive unemployment benefits late last month, and new requests again exceeded 600,000 last week as companies continue to lay off workers amid a deepening recession. The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of initial jobless claims fell to 623,000 last week from 631,000 the previous week. In a sign that laid-off workers are having trouble finding new work, the number of Americans claiming jobless benefits for more than one week rose to 4.81 million from 4.78 million the previous week, the highest total since records began in 1967. An additional 1.5 million people are receiving jobless benefits under an extended unemployment compensation program approved by Congress last year, bringing the total number of recipients to 6.3 million people. Continuing jobless claims are up sharply from a year ago, when the figure was 2.7 million.
