Pandemic jobless claims are at just over 3 million this week, nearly matching the number of claims we started over a month ago in March:
NY POST – Another 3.2 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as the coronavirus crisis sidelined 33 million workers in less than two months, the feds said Thursday.
That suggests one in five US workers tried to join the nation’s unemployment rolls in the last seven weeks as the pandemic delivered an unprecedented gut punch to the labor force.
But the seasonally adjusted number of initial jobless claims fell for the fifth consecutive week, indicating the layoffs peaked at the end of March, when workers filed 6.8 million claims, according to the US Department of Labor. Last week’s figure was in line with economists’ expectations for 3 million filings.
As a reminder, the first week of massive unemployment saw 3.3 million jobless claims. The following weeks saw 6.9 million, 6.6 million, 5.2 million, 4.4 million, 3.8 million, and now 3.2 million.
Thankfully it’s slowing, but over 33 million out of work is terrible. That’s somewhere close to a 20% unemployment rate, which will find out for sure tomorrow.
The good news is most states are starting to get people back to work at this point, but even that is in the early stages. Hopefully the economy will get moving again very soon.