Jobless rolls continue to rise due to the coronavirus, with 6.6 million Americans filing first-time unemployment claims last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That brings the total first-time jobless claims over the past three weeks to 16 million - over 10% of the total employed workforce prior to this period.

On the positive side, this week's number of new filings is a bit lower than last week. So there's that.

Part of the continues rise may be due to a provision in the $2.2 trillion federal coronavirus relief bill enacted last month -people who can file claims now include the self-employed and independent contractors.