*For millions of people, the coronavirus has made its presence known in the form of sudden unemployment.
The data is out and the number of people who filed claims for unemployment insurance in the US last week surged to an all-time high because as expected, the coronavirus pandemic spurred unprecedented layoffs.
The numbers are simply staggering. Jobless claims for the week ending March 21 totaled 3,283,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday, exceeding the consensus analyst forecast of 1.5 million. That was up from 281,000 in the previous week, which already marked a two-year high.
The latest number is by far the largest on record for a single week, exceeding the record of nearly 700,000 newly filed jobless claims set in 1982.
“Record is not even the right word here,” Martha Gimbel, an economist at Schmidt Futures, told Business Insider in an interview. “These numbers are literally incredible.”
Gimbel noted that for the week ending March 7, the total number of people on unemployment insurance in the US was 1.7 million, meaning more people filed for it last week than were in the program.
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Here’s more via Business Insider:
The unprecedented number of unemployment claims shows the exceptional damage the coronavirus pandemic is inflicting on the US economy. As the country races to curb its spread, states have gone into lockdown — sending workers home, encouraging social distancing, and closing schools, restaurants, and factories.
The shock those measures have created has never been seen before, and there’s uncertainty about when they will end.
“We don’t really have a good example of a case where global services activity has come to more or less a screeching halt,” Michael Gapen, the chief US economist at Barclays, told Business Insider.
Stimulus efforts have been widespread. In the past week, the Federal Reserve and the White House have moved to prop up the US economy amid the coronavirus outbreak.
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