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.”



Popular Potato Product Faces Recall in 26 States
Can Trump Really Denaturalize Somalis En Masse?
GOP lawmaker renews oversight hearing request of DHS agencies following fatal shooting in Minneapolis
Meet the longtime biz partner of Ilhan Omar’s husband as questions swirl over her skyrocketing net worth
Anti-ICE Church Harasser Posted Profane, Ranting Video Before Arrest, Called to ‘Shut This Country Down’
Minnesota school board member Chauntyll Allen ripped by state lawmaker after anti-ICE church invasion arrest
ACLU seeks reinstated constraints on federal officers in Minnesota after Alex Pretti shooting
Narratives clash after Trump and victim’s family react to second Minneapolis ICE shooting
Neonatal Nurse Pleads No Contest to 9 Charges of Abusing Infants – Will Serve Disgraceful Sentence Despite Damning Video Evidence
Trump hails ‘great and very brave’ UK soldiers after slamming NATO allies’ Afghanistan service
Lutnick Rips Globalist Elites Straight to Their Faces for Pillaging the American Dream
European leaders insist ‘shifting international order’ is inevitable while holding out hope instability will pass
CNN Analyst: Even Most Democrat Voters Hate the Democratic Party
Gambling industry bankrolls members of Congress who push pro-gambling legislation
Judge blocks Trump admin from ‘destroying or altering’ evidence in deadly Minneapolis shooting

See also  Organizer of GoFundMe for ‘agitating the Nazis’ involved in anti-ICE uprising at Minneapolis church

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:


Popular Potato Product Faces Recall in 26 States
Can Trump Really Denaturalize Somalis En Masse?
GOP lawmaker renews oversight hearing request of DHS agencies following fatal shooting in Minneapolis
Meet the longtime biz partner of Ilhan Omar’s husband as questions swirl over her skyrocketing net worth
Anti-ICE Church Harasser Posted Profane, Ranting Video Before Arrest, Called to ‘Shut This Country Down’
Minnesota school board member Chauntyll Allen ripped by state lawmaker after anti-ICE church invasion arrest
ACLU seeks reinstated constraints on federal officers in Minnesota after Alex Pretti shooting
Narratives clash after Trump and victim’s family react to second Minneapolis ICE shooting
Neonatal Nurse Pleads No Contest to 9 Charges of Abusing Infants – Will Serve Disgraceful Sentence Despite Damning Video Evidence
Trump hails ‘great and very brave’ UK soldiers after slamming NATO allies’ Afghanistan service
Lutnick Rips Globalist Elites Straight to Their Faces for Pillaging the American Dream
European leaders insist ‘shifting international order’ is inevitable while holding out hope instability will pass
CNN Analyst: Even Most Democrat Voters Hate the Democratic Party
Gambling industry bankrolls members of Congress who push pro-gambling legislation
Judge blocks Trump admin from ‘destroying or altering’ evidence in deadly Minneapolis shooting

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.


Popular Potato Product Faces Recall in 26 States
Can Trump Really Denaturalize Somalis En Masse?
GOP lawmaker renews oversight hearing request of DHS agencies following fatal shooting in Minneapolis
Meet the longtime biz partner of Ilhan Omar’s husband as questions swirl over her skyrocketing net worth
Anti-ICE Church Harasser Posted Profane, Ranting Video Before Arrest, Called to ‘Shut This Country Down’
Minnesota school board member Chauntyll Allen ripped by state lawmaker after anti-ICE church invasion arrest
ACLU seeks reinstated constraints on federal officers in Minnesota after Alex Pretti shooting
Narratives clash after Trump and victim’s family react to second Minneapolis ICE shooting
Neonatal Nurse Pleads No Contest to 9 Charges of Abusing Infants – Will Serve Disgraceful Sentence Despite Damning Video Evidence
Trump hails ‘great and very brave’ UK soldiers after slamming NATO allies’ Afghanistan service
Lutnick Rips Globalist Elites Straight to Their Faces for Pillaging the American Dream
European leaders insist ‘shifting international order’ is inevitable while holding out hope instability will pass
CNN Analyst: Even Most Democrat Voters Hate the Democratic Party
Gambling industry bankrolls members of Congress who push pro-gambling legislation
Judge blocks Trump admin from ‘destroying or altering’ evidence in deadly Minneapolis shooting

See also  The Lincoln Project continues to enrich leaders as its co-founder wants $100 million more

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