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.”
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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:
ICE says immigrant who died in Texas detention center committed suicide
Judge and wife shot in broad daylight in Indiana, sparking massive multi-agency investigation
Dem Senator Warner admits Biden ‘screwed up’ the border, but claims ICE now targeting noncriminals
Trump says media focuses too much on Minnesota ICE coverage, not enough on corruption allegations
Maryland Democrat’s bill seeks to ‘digitally unmask’ ICE agents after fatal Minneapolis shooting
Bill Cassidy challenger digs in against Trump’s preferred GOP Senate candidate
Florida repeat offender allegedly killed 3 tourists minutes from Magic Kingdom after run of violence: records
ISIS fighters reportedly escape from Kurdish prisons amid fighting with government
Piers Morgan Hospitalized After Suffering Serious Injury at Restaurant
UN chief accuses US of ditching international law as Trump blasts global bodies
Minneapolis software engineers mistaken for ICE agents while eating lunch harassed by anti-ICE crowd
Oops: Leader of Anti-ICE Church Invasion Just Made Prosecutors’ Job a Lot Easier
Bruce Springsteen Pauses Concert to Deliver Vulgar Anti-ICE Message
Watch: US National Anthem Heckled at London NBA Game
Prominent Catholic bishop slams anti-ICE agitators who disrupted MN church service: ‘Unacceptable’
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.
ICE says immigrant who died in Texas detention center committed suicide
Judge and wife shot in broad daylight in Indiana, sparking massive multi-agency investigation
Dem Senator Warner admits Biden ‘screwed up’ the border, but claims ICE now targeting noncriminals
Trump says media focuses too much on Minnesota ICE coverage, not enough on corruption allegations
Maryland Democrat’s bill seeks to ‘digitally unmask’ ICE agents after fatal Minneapolis shooting
Bill Cassidy challenger digs in against Trump’s preferred GOP Senate candidate
Florida repeat offender allegedly killed 3 tourists minutes from Magic Kingdom after run of violence: records
ISIS fighters reportedly escape from Kurdish prisons amid fighting with government
Piers Morgan Hospitalized After Suffering Serious Injury at Restaurant
UN chief accuses US of ditching international law as Trump blasts global bodies
Minneapolis software engineers mistaken for ICE agents while eating lunch harassed by anti-ICE crowd
Oops: Leader of Anti-ICE Church Invasion Just Made Prosecutors’ Job a Lot Easier
Bruce Springsteen Pauses Concert to Deliver Vulgar Anti-ICE Message
Watch: US National Anthem Heckled at London NBA Game
Prominent Catholic bishop slams anti-ICE agitators who disrupted MN church service: ‘Unacceptable’
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.
