Unemployment Claims Climb To 22 Mill As U.S. Remains Epicenter of Global Pandemic; 'Staggering'
'Staggering': Unemployment Claims Climb to 22 Million as US Remains Epicenter of Global Pandemic. "And that's just the beginning. These numbers only count the people who qualify for unemployment." Common Dreams, April 16, 2020.
Roughly 22 million Americans have filed jobless claims since mid-March as the United States has become the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic, with over 30% of the world's more than two million confirmed cases. "Mass unemployment is a policy choice. We need my Paycheck Guarantee Act to ensure all workers get their paycheck during this crisis." —Rep. Pramila Jayapal The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced Thursday that over 5.2 million people filed for unemployment insurance (UI) during the week that ended April 11, bringing the seasonally adjusted four-week total to about 22 million. Although the new DOL report (pdf) featured a lower weekly figure than last week, the broader conditions resulting from virus-related shutdowns continued to alarm economists and elicit comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s. "All told, roughly nearly 12 million people are now receiving unemployment checks, roughly matching the peak reached in January 2010, shortly after the Great Recession officially ended," the Associated Press reported Thursday.
"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," the AP noted. "By comparison, unemployment never topped 10% during the Great Recession."
Using unadjusted rather than seasonally adjusted DOL figures, Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) pointed out that "the 20.1 million jobless claims in the last four weeks are more than five times the worst four-week stretch of the Great Recession." DOL reports 2 figures for workers who applied for UI in the last 4 weeks, 22.0 mil (seasonally adjusted) and 20.1 mil (not seasonally adjusted). The way DOL does seasonal adjustments is weird right now, so I use the unadjusted numbers b/c that’s the actual number of claims. 2/ — Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) April 16, 2020 Shierholz, a senior economist and director of policy at EPI, added in her statement: It is important to note that the extraordinary UI claims of the last month don't include people who aren't eligible for regular UI but are nevertheless out of work due to the virus—people like independent contractors, those who had to quit work to care for a child whose school closed, and many others.
-- Miguel Diaz, who works for the City of Hialeah, Florida hands out unemployment applications in front of the John F. Kennedy Library, April 8, 2020. The city is distributing printed unemployment forms to residents as people continue to have issues with access to the state's unemployment website in the midst of widespread layoffs.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) made a similar point while responding to the DOL announcement on Twitter. "It's staggering," he said of the 22 million claims, "and many are still having trouble filing for unemployment insurance, meaning the true number is even higher." The youth-led Sunrise Movement also recognized the DOL data as incomplete and reiterated a growing demand that the federal government pursue a #PeoplesBailout rather than just bailing out corporations and executives affected by outbreak: The impacts of this pandemic are growing everyday & our current govt is failing to address it. The Trump admin. is trying to cover up how bad this crisis really is. We need to support & aid working people, not bailout CEOs once again like we did in 2008.#PeoplesBailout — Sunrise Movement (@sunrisemvmt) April 16, 2020
"Mass unemployment is a policy choice," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) declared in response to the DOL report. "We need my Paycheck Guarantee Act to ensure all workers get their paycheck during this crisis." Jayapal's proposal, introduced last week, has the support of labor unions and small business advocates. The measure would allow companies nationwide to fully cover their employees' salaries of up to $100,000 annually, following the lead of similar schemes in other countries around the world. The United States has long faced ridicule for being the world's only industrialized nation that doesn't have universal healthcare but criticism of the inadequate, for-profit U.S. system has ramped up as the coronavirus has ravaged the country, killing at least 31,000 people. The global death toll for COVID-19 is over 139,000...noting that about half of Americans have health insurance through an employer, the advocacy group Public Citizen tweeted: "Millions are losing health insurance during a pandemic. We need Medicare for All."
"The next relief and recovery package should provide aid to state and local governments, extend unemployment insurance benefits, provide better protections for workers and jobs, and include funding to safeguard our democracy." —Heidi Shierholz, EPI.
"This crisis combines the scale of a national economic downturn with the pace of a natural disaster," Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at Glassdoor, told the outlet. "And that's really unprecedented in American economic history." EPI projects that "near-term job losses could exceed 30 million....
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/16/staggering-unemployment-claims-climb-22-million-us-remains-epicenter-global-pandemic
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