3.3 Million People Filed for Unemployment Last Week

Things are getting dark.

JOHANNES EISELE/Getty Images

1. Republicans Claim There’s a Disastrous “Drafting Error” in the Coronavirus Bill That Isn’t Actually a Drafting Error
2. No, We’re Not Going to Run Out of Groceries
3. The New Stimulus Bill Gives Unemployed Workers an Extra $600 per Week. That’s Huge.
4. Sending People Back to Work Now Will Not Save the Economy. It Will Doom It.

Nearly 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, according to the new official report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as businesses across the country shuttered and let go workers due to the coronavirus crisis. The number obliterates previous records set during past recessions and outstrips the most dire predictions from earlier this month (Goldman Sachs had suggested that that we might see 2.25 million layoffs, which seemed like a nightmare scenario at the time).

Some numbers to put this news in perspective: The week before last, just 282,000 filed for unemployment, which was a one-third jump. The previous all-time seasonally adjusted high for claims was 695,000, set in 1982. What we’re seeing is unprecedented. I mean, the graph looks like some kind of data entry error.

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

The economic relief bill that the Senate passed Wednesday thankfully includes a major expansion of jobless aid; among other tweaks, it will provide those who’ve lost work an extra $600 a week for four months, on top of their normal benefits. But processing this number of claims has already proven to be an immense challenge. Last week, state unemployment websites crashed and phone lines were swamped as people rushed to file. Our safety-net infrastructure really isn’t built for this kind of sudden surge in need.

The one hope I can think of here is that the layoffs during this crisis might be frontloaded. This isn’t a normal recession in which the economy slows down and employers start gradually laying off workers. Instead, we’re seeing a sudden stop, where states and cities are essentially shutting down nonessential businesses and telling people to stay home. So perhaps we’re just seeing several weeks worth of claims bunched together, and they’ll quickly trail off.

Or maybe we’re just watching the start of something truly awful.

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