Dow up 300 points as weekly claims show 3.2 million Americans are out of work amid the coronavirus pandemic

U.S. stock-index futures on Thursday were held onto solid sharp gains after a report on Americans seeking unemployment benefit showed that roughly 3.2 million people were out of work, according to the most recent data. However, the number of initial ended May 2 was less than half the crisis peak of 6.9 million at the end of March. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up about 300 points, or 1.3%, at 23,807, those for the S&P 500 index gained 1.4% at 2,872, while Nasdaq-100 futures were climbing 1.3% at 9,069. Thursday's U.S. report on those seeking unemployment benefits adds to the already 30 million figure that has been racked up over the past six or seven weeks. The report comes a day after Automatic Data Processing Inc. reported a 20.2 million decline in employment in April among the nation's privately run companies.

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