There were 3.8 million unemployment claims filed in the U.S. last week, pushing the total to more than 30 million since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
NEW YORK — Bleak new figures Thursday underscored the worldwide economic pain inflicted by the coronavirus: The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits has climbed past a staggering 30 million, while Europe’s economies have gone into an epic slide.
And as bad as the numbers are, some are already outdated because of the lag in gathering data, and the true economic picture is almost certainly much worse.
The statistics are likely to stoke the debate over whether to ease lockdowns that have closed factories and other businesses. While many states and countries have pressed ahead, health officials have warned of the danger of a second wave of infection, and some employers and employees have expressed fear of going back to work when large numbers of people are still dying.
In the U.S., the government reported that 3.8 million laid-off workers applied for jobless benefits last week, raising the total to 30.3 million in the six weeks since the outbreak took hold.
The layoffs amount to 1 in 6 American workers and encompass more people than the entire population of Texas.
Some economists say when the U.S. unemployment rate for April comes out next week, it could be as high as 20% — a figure not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, when joblessness peaked at 25%.
The number of Americans thrown out of work could be much higher than unemployment claims show, because some people have not applied and others couldn’t get through to their states’ overwhelmed systems. A poll by two economists found that the U.S. may have lost 34 million jobs.
There was grim new data across Europe, too, where more than 130,000 people with the virus have died. The economy in the 19 countries using the euro shrank 3.8% in the first quarter of the year, the biggest contraction since the eurozone countries began keeping joint statistics 25 years ago.
Unemployment in Europe has reached 7.4%, the statistics agency Eurostat reported. However, big jobprotection programs run by governments are temporarily keeping millions of Europeans on payrolls, sparing them from the monumental layoffs the U.S. is seeing.
The virus has killed over 232,000 people worldwide, including more than 62,000 in the U.S., according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Confirmed infections globally topped 3.2 million, with 1 million of them in the U.S., but the true numbers are believed to be much higher because of limited testing, differences in counting the dead and concealment by some governments.
In other developments: t Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he would allow his statewide shelter-in-place order to expire at midnight Thursday but is extending his emergency powers to June 12 and telling the elderly and medically fragile to stay at home until then.
The first-term Republican governor had already carved sizable loopholes in his order that applied to all 10 million Georgians and signaled it would end when he allowed some businesses to reopen last week and Monday. Social distancing requirements and bans on large gatherings remain in place.
Kemp told The Associated Press on Thursday that he’s been pleased with how his effort to reopen some businesses — among the most aggressive in the nation — has gone in the face of a continuing COVID-19 pandemic that has sickened 26,000 people in the state and killed more than 1,100.
“Georgians are smart, they’re entrepreneurs, and they’re innovators, and many of them had figured out how to deal with this in a safe way,” Kemp said. t In Germany, authorities agreed to reopen playgrounds, churches and cultural institutions such as museums and zoos that have been shuttered, but they postponed a decision on whether to relax the rules for restaurants, hotels and kindergartens.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said that while there would be regional differences because of Germany’s federal structure, the overall goal remains ensuring the health system can cope with the country’s outbreak. t In Michigan, hundreds of conservative protesters, including some openly carrying guns, returned to the Capitol in Lansing to denounce Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stayhome order and business restrictions. The Republican-led Michigan House refused to extend the state’s coronavirus emergency declaration and voted to authorize a lawsuit challenging Whitmer’s authority and actions to combat the pandemic. t A 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship that arrived in New York City to great fanfare a month ago left town after treating just 182 patients. The surge of cases there has fallen well short of the doomsday predictions. The 24-hour number of deaths statewide was down to 306, the lowest in a month. t California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered beaches in Orange County closed until further notice after tens of thousands of people flocked to the ocean front last weekend. t Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Britain is “past the peak” and “on a downward slope” in its coronavirus outbreak. t Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, 54, said he has tested positive for the virus and will go into isolation.