Record 22m apply for US jobless aid
THE wave of job losses that has engulfed the US economy since the coronavirus struck forced 5.2 million more Americans to seek unemployment benefits last week, the US government reported.
Roughly 22 million have sought jobless benefits in the past month – easily the worst stretch of US job losses on record.
All told, roughly nearly 12 million people in the US are now receiving unemployment benefits, roughly matching the peak reached in January 2010, shortly after the Great Recession officially ended.
All businesses deemed nonessential have been closed in nearly every state as the economy has virtually shut down.
Deep job losses have been inflicted across nearly every industry. Some economists say the unemployment rate could reach as high as 20% in April, which would be the highest rate since the Great Depression of the 1930s. By comparison, unemployment never topped 10% during the Great Recession.
Collectively, the job cuts could produce unemployment on an epic scale.
Up to 50 million jobs are vulnerable to coronavirus-related layoffs, economists say – about one-third of all positions in the United States.
That figure is based on a calculation of jobs that are deemed nonessential by state and federal governments and that cannot be done from home.
It is unlikely that all those workers will be laid off or file for unemployment benefits. But it suggests the extraordinary magnitude of unemployment that could result from the pandemic.
“This crisis combines the scale of a national economic downturn with the pace of a natural disaster,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor. “That’s unprecedented in American economic history.”
The US economy is tumbling into what appears to be a calamitous recession, the worst in decades.
Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimates that the nation’s output will shrink 10.5% before it starts to rebound. That would be more than double the contraction that occurred during the 2008-2009 recession, which was the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Retailers and other service companies keep cutting jobs.
The electronics chain Best Buy said this week that it will furlough 51,000 of its hourly employees, including nearly all its part-time workers. Royal Caribbean Cruises will cut one-quarter of its 5,000 corporate employees. Yelp, the customer review site, cut 1,000 jobs while Groupon, the online discount company, shed 2,800.