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.”
Fox News Campus Radicals Newsletter: Jewish student abuse alleged, disrespecting Charlie Kirk, woke work
FBI arrests protester who threatened to kill ICE officer’s family at NJ detention center protest, Blanche says
Uber CEO: In the Future, You Won’t Own Your Car
Dan Sullivan vs. Dan Sullivan: GOP blasts clone candidate as lookalike enters Alaska Senate race
Virginia bus crash that killed five involved driver who doesn’t speak English, Sean Duffy says
Who is Christopher Cooper, the judge who blocked Trump’s plans for the Kennedy Center?
Dem Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed recounts smashing vodka bottle after beard criticism
GRAPHIC: Next Time Somebody Complains ICE Is Wearing Masks, Shut Them up with This Footage – ‘Your Whole ****ing Family Is Dead … I Have Your Face!’
Sheridan Gorman’s alleged illegal immigrant killer caught with weapon while in jail custody, police say
Minnesota Law Enforcement Travels to Texas to Arrest ICE Agent
Obama-Appointed Judge Blocks Renaming of Kennedy Center and Closing It for Renovations
FBI and Texas authorities arrest 276 suspected child predators, rescue 89 children in sweeping operation
Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s $1.8 Billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund,’ Setting Up Critical Hearing
‘There Are No Words’: 6th Grader Dies on School Trip
Federal judge orders Trump’s name removed from Kennedy Center, says only Congress can rename it
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:
Fox News Campus Radicals Newsletter: Jewish student abuse alleged, disrespecting Charlie Kirk, woke work
FBI arrests protester who threatened to kill ICE officer’s family at NJ detention center protest, Blanche says
Uber CEO: In the Future, You Won’t Own Your Car
Dan Sullivan vs. Dan Sullivan: GOP blasts clone candidate as lookalike enters Alaska Senate race
Virginia bus crash that killed five involved driver who doesn’t speak English, Sean Duffy says
Who is Christopher Cooper, the judge who blocked Trump’s plans for the Kennedy Center?
Dem Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed recounts smashing vodka bottle after beard criticism
GRAPHIC: Next Time Somebody Complains ICE Is Wearing Masks, Shut Them up with This Footage – ‘Your Whole ****ing Family Is Dead … I Have Your Face!’
Sheridan Gorman’s alleged illegal immigrant killer caught with weapon while in jail custody, police say
Minnesota Law Enforcement Travels to Texas to Arrest ICE Agent
Obama-Appointed Judge Blocks Renaming of Kennedy Center and Closing It for Renovations
FBI and Texas authorities arrest 276 suspected child predators, rescue 89 children in sweeping operation
Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s $1.8 Billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund,’ Setting Up Critical Hearing
‘There Are No Words’: 6th Grader Dies on School Trip
Federal judge orders Trump’s name removed from Kennedy Center, says only Congress can rename it
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.
Fox News Campus Radicals Newsletter: Jewish student abuse alleged, disrespecting Charlie Kirk, woke work
FBI arrests protester who threatened to kill ICE officer’s family at NJ detention center protest, Blanche says
Uber CEO: In the Future, You Won’t Own Your Car
Dan Sullivan vs. Dan Sullivan: GOP blasts clone candidate as lookalike enters Alaska Senate race
Virginia bus crash that killed five involved driver who doesn’t speak English, Sean Duffy says
Who is Christopher Cooper, the judge who blocked Trump’s plans for the Kennedy Center?
Dem Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed recounts smashing vodka bottle after beard criticism
GRAPHIC: Next Time Somebody Complains ICE Is Wearing Masks, Shut Them up with This Footage – ‘Your Whole ****ing Family Is Dead … I Have Your Face!’
Sheridan Gorman’s alleged illegal immigrant killer caught with weapon while in jail custody, police say
Minnesota Law Enforcement Travels to Texas to Arrest ICE Agent
Obama-Appointed Judge Blocks Renaming of Kennedy Center and Closing It for Renovations
FBI and Texas authorities arrest 276 suspected child predators, rescue 89 children in sweeping operation
Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s $1.8 Billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund,’ Setting Up Critical Hearing
‘There Are No Words’: 6th Grader Dies on School Trip
Federal judge orders Trump’s name removed from Kennedy Center, says only Congress can rename it
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.
