Jobless claims fall below 300,000 for the first time since pandemic hit
CBSN
The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment claims has fallen below 300,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.
Some 293,000 first-time applications for unemployment benefits were filed last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the smallest number of people to apply for benefits since March 2020, when the pandemic intensified, and the second weekly drop in claims.
All told, some 3.6 million people were receiving some sort of jobless aid in the last week of September.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.
The knock at the door came at nighttime on Mother's Day 2008 in Oregon, where Jessica Ellis' parents lived. It was around 9:20 p.m. and his wife, Linda, was already in bed; her father Steve Ellis told CBS News, that he thought someone let their animals out — but two soldiers in Class A uniforms were standing at the door.