Finance International Lifestyle News Opinons Politics

Analysis Shows More Workers Filed for Unemployment Last Week Than Any Other in US History

A new analysis released Tuesday shows that more U.S. workers filed unemployment claims last week than during any other week in the nation’s history.

An estimated 3.4 million Americans filed such claims for the week ending March 21, according to the findings from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

“This will dwarf every other week in history,” wrote EPI’s Aaron Sojourner and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, adding, “The true impacts are undoubtedly of larger scale than described here.”



James Patterson claims Marilyn Monroe was murdered in explosive new book theory
Florida’s Lawsuit Against Planned Parenthood Just the Beginning
Texas girl rescued after sand hole she was digging collapses, burying her
Unbelievable – She Might Actually Win a District Dominated By Trump: Democrat Aftyn Behn’s Most Unhinged Moments
Afghan Suspect Faces First-Degree Murder Charge in National Guard Shooting
WSJ Editorial Board Rushes to Defend Afghan Refugees After Deadly National Guard Attack
Watchdog group hits Letitia James with bar complaint after federal judge tosses case
Inside NORAD’s holiday command: How the same team that tracks Santa guards North America
Former Ukrainian ‘co-president’ Yermak says he’s ‘going to the front’ after shock resignation
National Guardsman shot in DC is ‘hanging on,’ family pleading for prayer, congressman says
Criminal networks exploit US interstates to make human trafficking victims vanish: ‘Real plague’
Meta Tolerated Sex Traffickers With 17-Strike System, Lawsuit Claims
This Is Why You Can’t Trust Public Schools: Teachers Union Teaches ‘Interrupting Whiteness’
Hegseth defends lethal strikes against alleged drug traffickers: ‘Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them’
White House implored to institutionalize DOGE after reports of premature demise

See also  DOGE closes eight months early, but principles remain ‘alive and well’

The startling calculation—based on claims in 35 states and Washington, D.C. and extrapolated to the other 15 states—comes as the nation continues to experience a rise in cases of the novel coronavirus—with over 46,000 confirmed as of Tuesday—and as ordinary Americans feel the economic and societal impacts of the crisis, with schools, stores, and work places temporarily shuttered, varying degrees of lockdowns in place, and households and frontline workers still wondering if lawmakers will put their urgent needs above those of corporate America.

A graph accompanying the new EPI analysis, which is based on data from news reports from March 15 to March 21, illustrates the enormous jump in unemployment claims—even if the actual figure ends up being on the analysts’ low-end projection of 3 million claims. At no other point in the timeline shown does the figure even scrape 1 million.

The U.S. is experiencing a record-breaking spike in unemployment. Figure: Economic Policy Institute

Reaction to the findings was stark:


James Patterson claims Marilyn Monroe was murdered in explosive new book theory
Florida’s Lawsuit Against Planned Parenthood Just the Beginning
Texas girl rescued after sand hole she was digging collapses, burying her
Unbelievable – She Might Actually Win a District Dominated By Trump: Democrat Aftyn Behn’s Most Unhinged Moments
Afghan Suspect Faces First-Degree Murder Charge in National Guard Shooting
WSJ Editorial Board Rushes to Defend Afghan Refugees After Deadly National Guard Attack
Watchdog group hits Letitia James with bar complaint after federal judge tosses case
Inside NORAD’s holiday command: How the same team that tracks Santa guards North America
Former Ukrainian ‘co-president’ Yermak says he’s ‘going to the front’ after shock resignation
National Guardsman shot in DC is ‘hanging on,’ family pleading for prayer, congressman says
Criminal networks exploit US interstates to make human trafficking victims vanish: ‘Real plague’
Meta Tolerated Sex Traffickers With 17-Strike System, Lawsuit Claims
This Is Why You Can’t Trust Public Schools: Teachers Union Teaches ‘Interrupting Whiteness’
Hegseth defends lethal strikes against alleged drug traffickers: ‘Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them’
White House implored to institutionalize DOGE after reports of premature demise

Sojourner and Goldsmith-Pinkham, both research associates at EPI, put the projection into the context of the nation’s unemployment rate:

For scale, consider that 3.4 million Americans moving from employment to unemployment would raise the number of the unemployed from 5.7 million to 9.1 million. This alone would raise the unemployment rate by more than half, by 2 percentage points from 3.5% to 5.5%, moving back to 2015 levels in just one week. This spike represents 2.2% of all jobs in the economy. The largest monthly rise in the unemployment rate in American history was plus 1.3 percentage points in October 1949.


James Patterson claims Marilyn Monroe was murdered in explosive new book theory
Florida’s Lawsuit Against Planned Parenthood Just the Beginning
Texas girl rescued after sand hole she was digging collapses, burying her
Unbelievable – She Might Actually Win a District Dominated By Trump: Democrat Aftyn Behn’s Most Unhinged Moments
Afghan Suspect Faces First-Degree Murder Charge in National Guard Shooting
WSJ Editorial Board Rushes to Defend Afghan Refugees After Deadly National Guard Attack
Watchdog group hits Letitia James with bar complaint after federal judge tosses case
Inside NORAD’s holiday command: How the same team that tracks Santa guards North America
Former Ukrainian ‘co-president’ Yermak says he’s ‘going to the front’ after shock resignation
National Guardsman shot in DC is ‘hanging on,’ family pleading for prayer, congressman says
Criminal networks exploit US interstates to make human trafficking victims vanish: ‘Real plague’
Meta Tolerated Sex Traffickers With 17-Strike System, Lawsuit Claims
This Is Why You Can’t Trust Public Schools: Teachers Union Teaches ‘Interrupting Whiteness’
Hegseth defends lethal strikes against alleged drug traffickers: ‘Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them’
White House implored to institutionalize DOGE after reports of premature demise

See also  How millions of illegal immigrants got jobs in the US

Grim as the scenario painted by the analsis is, reality may be even worse. The researchers wrote that the actual tally of claims “could be substantially higher.” Not all unemployed workers are able to file unemployment insurance claims either, and for those that do, they’ll get about half—or less—of their regular income. The end of the coronavirus crisis is also not in the immediate future.

All that points to the need for the federal government to provide states with more aid.

“American working families are paying a large price through no fault of their own,” wrote Sojourner and Goldsmith-Pinkham. “But there is no shortcutting public health to get the American economy back to work. A healthy economy requires public health.”

Story cited here.

 

Share this article:
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter