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.”
Ex-Iowa school superintendent sentenced to prison as an illegal alien found with firearms
Elderly couple fatally stabbed inside Queens apartment, no arrests made as investigation continues: report
ICE arrests illegal alien who allegedly faked asylum claim based on homosexuality, became Indiana jail officer
Hasan Piker says UK has barred him, trashes ‘unbelievable…power’ of pro-Israel groups
Pratt rallies supporters as Los Angeles mayoral race enters final stretch
Left-wing streamer blasts New Jersey governor over state police response at ICE facility protests
Man who warned coworkers ‘no one’s going home today’ gets prison term in fatal shooting
Scott Peterson’s longtime lawyer claims ‘new’ evidence could force courts to revisit his murder conviction
Hospitals Promised Less Expensive Care After Merging Into Behemoths – the Opposite Happened
Bad News Across the Country for Dems Desperately Trying to Redistrict Before the Midterms
NYPD commissioner ‘proudly’ leads Israel parade as grand marshal; Mamdani breaks tradition, avoids event
NASA Reveals Moon Base Plan With Construction Process Beginning as Early as 2029
Trump warns judge against sacrificing national security by blocking White House ballroom, drone base
The Civil War Never Really Ended, But an American Union Could Finally Help America Truly Heal
Why NATO’s defense spending imbalance lasted for decades
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.
Reaction to the findings was stark:
Ex-Iowa school superintendent sentenced to prison as an illegal alien found with firearms
Elderly couple fatally stabbed inside Queens apartment, no arrests made as investigation continues: report
ICE arrests illegal alien who allegedly faked asylum claim based on homosexuality, became Indiana jail officer
Hasan Piker says UK has barred him, trashes ‘unbelievable…power’ of pro-Israel groups
Pratt rallies supporters as Los Angeles mayoral race enters final stretch
Left-wing streamer blasts New Jersey governor over state police response at ICE facility protests
Man who warned coworkers ‘no one’s going home today’ gets prison term in fatal shooting
Scott Peterson’s longtime lawyer claims ‘new’ evidence could force courts to revisit his murder conviction
Hospitals Promised Less Expensive Care After Merging Into Behemoths – the Opposite Happened
Bad News Across the Country for Dems Desperately Trying to Redistrict Before the Midterms
NYPD commissioner ‘proudly’ leads Israel parade as grand marshal; Mamdani breaks tradition, avoids event
NASA Reveals Moon Base Plan With Construction Process Beginning as Early as 2029
Trump warns judge against sacrificing national security by blocking White House ballroom, drone base
The Civil War Never Really Ended, But an American Union Could Finally Help America Truly Heal
Why NATO’s defense spending imbalance lasted for decades
This chart, holy shit https://t.co/luqjZ4ngsh pic.twitter.com/NeCbcOY1aw
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) March 24, 2020
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.
Ex-Iowa school superintendent sentenced to prison as an illegal alien found with firearms
Elderly couple fatally stabbed inside Queens apartment, no arrests made as investigation continues: report
ICE arrests illegal alien who allegedly faked asylum claim based on homosexuality, became Indiana jail officer
Hasan Piker says UK has barred him, trashes ‘unbelievable…power’ of pro-Israel groups
Pratt rallies supporters as Los Angeles mayoral race enters final stretch
Left-wing streamer blasts New Jersey governor over state police response at ICE facility protests
Man who warned coworkers ‘no one’s going home today’ gets prison term in fatal shooting
Scott Peterson’s longtime lawyer claims ‘new’ evidence could force courts to revisit his murder conviction
Hospitals Promised Less Expensive Care After Merging Into Behemoths – the Opposite Happened
Bad News Across the Country for Dems Desperately Trying to Redistrict Before the Midterms
NYPD commissioner ‘proudly’ leads Israel parade as grand marshal; Mamdani breaks tradition, avoids event
NASA Reveals Moon Base Plan With Construction Process Beginning as Early as 2029
Trump warns judge against sacrificing national security by blocking White House ballroom, drone base
The Civil War Never Really Ended, But an American Union Could Finally Help America Truly Heal
Why NATO’s defense spending imbalance lasted for decades
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.
