- New unemployment insurance claims skyrocketed to 6.65 million last week
- Current unemployment rate nearing 10% (2009’s high)
- More Americans eligible for UI under new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance
Jobless claims came in well above expectations with another 6.65 million Americans filing for unemployment insurance last week, building on what was already a record 3.31 million claims in the prior week. (It’s worth remembering that we never measured claims in millions until the last two weeks.) Those 10 million people represent about 6% of the US labour force, suggesting the current unemployment rate is near the last recession’s high water mark of 10%. And layoffs are likely to continue in the coming weeks. This pace of job loss is absolutely unprecedented and has called for a strong response from lawmakers. Expanded eligibility for unemployment insurance (which is inserting a break into this claims series, but no matter) and more importantly a generous federal top-up to state payouts will help fill some of the massive income gap created by these layoffs.
Tomorrow we’ll get the more widely-reported monthly payroll and unemployment numbers for March. They won’t reflect the true extent of job losses as the survey period covered the second week of March, before social distancing and business closures put millions out of work (claims in that survey week rose to 282,000 from 211,000 in the prior week). We’ll have to wait for April’s numbers for the official read on just how much the US unemployment rate has increased in recent weeks.
