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.”
Toledo police name suspect Ka Nye Taylor in festival shooting that injured 12, hunt second gunman
Prosecutors won’t seek death penalty in Minnesota Democrat’s assassination
Ohio approves nearly billion dollar payment after court ruled state shortchanged nursing homes
Minnesota man marks FBI’s first arrest from DOJ’s ‘Most Wanted Fraudsters’ list
Musk’s xAI and SpaceX sued over ‘inescapable’ noise from data center plant
‘He Was Licking His Lips With the Blood’ – Witness to Would-Be Beheading in N. Ireland Shares Grotesque Details
House Dem lashes out at GOP efforts to probe foreign donations with stunning claim on motive
Undefeated lacrosse team’s championship dreams end in controversy after players punished over fake cigars
Video: Christian Coffee Shop Hosts Worship as Vicious Trans Activists Scream, Attack Right Outside Their Door
Trump Says US Has Gotten ‘Millions of Barrels’ of Oil Through the Strait of Hormuz ‘Every Night,’ and Iran Just Realized
Fact Check: Did California Officials Catch a Republican Woman Registering Her Dog to Vote?
‘Squad’ Dem dismisses fraud probe speculation after $29M net-worth drop
UPDATE: Victim in Would-Be Beheading Is ‘Vulnerable’ Person with Disabilities, According to Neighbors
BREAKING ALERT: US Launches Significant New Strikes Against Iran, Hegseth Warns Will Be ‘Busy Tonight’
Vulnerable House Dem’s ‘reckless spending’ on office furniture emerges as midterms heat up
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:
Toledo police name suspect Ka Nye Taylor in festival shooting that injured 12, hunt second gunman
Prosecutors won’t seek death penalty in Minnesota Democrat’s assassination
Ohio approves nearly billion dollar payment after court ruled state shortchanged nursing homes
Minnesota man marks FBI’s first arrest from DOJ’s ‘Most Wanted Fraudsters’ list
Musk’s xAI and SpaceX sued over ‘inescapable’ noise from data center plant
‘He Was Licking His Lips With the Blood’ – Witness to Would-Be Beheading in N. Ireland Shares Grotesque Details
House Dem lashes out at GOP efforts to probe foreign donations with stunning claim on motive
Undefeated lacrosse team’s championship dreams end in controversy after players punished over fake cigars
Video: Christian Coffee Shop Hosts Worship as Vicious Trans Activists Scream, Attack Right Outside Their Door
Trump Says US Has Gotten ‘Millions of Barrels’ of Oil Through the Strait of Hormuz ‘Every Night,’ and Iran Just Realized
Fact Check: Did California Officials Catch a Republican Woman Registering Her Dog to Vote?
‘Squad’ Dem dismisses fraud probe speculation after $29M net-worth drop
UPDATE: Victim in Would-Be Beheading Is ‘Vulnerable’ Person with Disabilities, According to Neighbors
BREAKING ALERT: US Launches Significant New Strikes Against Iran, Hegseth Warns Will Be ‘Busy Tonight’
Vulnerable House Dem’s ‘reckless spending’ on office furniture emerges as midterms heat up
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.
Toledo police name suspect Ka Nye Taylor in festival shooting that injured 12, hunt second gunman
Prosecutors won’t seek death penalty in Minnesota Democrat’s assassination
Ohio approves nearly billion dollar payment after court ruled state shortchanged nursing homes
Minnesota man marks FBI’s first arrest from DOJ’s ‘Most Wanted Fraudsters’ list
Musk’s xAI and SpaceX sued over ‘inescapable’ noise from data center plant
‘He Was Licking His Lips With the Blood’ – Witness to Would-Be Beheading in N. Ireland Shares Grotesque Details
House Dem lashes out at GOP efforts to probe foreign donations with stunning claim on motive
Undefeated lacrosse team’s championship dreams end in controversy after players punished over fake cigars
Video: Christian Coffee Shop Hosts Worship as Vicious Trans Activists Scream, Attack Right Outside Their Door
Trump Says US Has Gotten ‘Millions of Barrels’ of Oil Through the Strait of Hormuz ‘Every Night,’ and Iran Just Realized
Fact Check: Did California Officials Catch a Republican Woman Registering Her Dog to Vote?
‘Squad’ Dem dismisses fraud probe speculation after $29M net-worth drop
UPDATE: Victim in Would-Be Beheading Is ‘Vulnerable’ Person with Disabilities, According to Neighbors
BREAKING ALERT: US Launches Significant New Strikes Against Iran, Hegseth Warns Will Be ‘Busy Tonight’
Vulnerable House Dem’s ‘reckless spending’ on office furniture emerges as midterms heat up
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.
