The data from the Labor Department revealed on Thursday the number of applications for unemployment was unchanged last week but exceeded economists’ forecast, as the U.S. labor market is trying to recover from its biggest shock in history, caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the report, the initial claims for unemployment benefits totaled 884,000 for the week ended September 5. That brought the number of job losses over the past twenty-five weeks (since the U.S. went into coronavirus lockdown in mid-March) to near 60.2 million.

Economists had expected 846,000 new claims last week.

Claims for the prior week were revised upwardly to 884,000 from the initial estimate of 881,000.

Meanwhile, the four-week moving average of claims fell to 970,750 from an upwardly revised 992,500 in the previous week.

Continuing claims increased to 13,385,000 million from an upwardly revised 13,292,000 in the previous week.