Nearly 20 Percent Of The U.S. Labor Force Has Filed For Unemployment Since Mid-March

Now in its seventh week, the U.S. unemployment crisis continues to deepen. According to Thursday’s data release from the Department of Labor, 3.8 million more Americans filed for unemployment insurance during the week ending April 25. Although that represents the fourth consecutive week of decline in seasonally adjusted initial claims, the number remains historic. (Remember, no single week prior to March 21 had ever seen even 1 million initial claims since 1967, the earliest year that data is available from the Federal Reserve.) If we add up all of the initial claims filed since the coronavirus recession began,¹ more than 30 million people — or nearly 19 percent of the total U.S. labor force — have filed for unemployment claims over the past month and a half.

Experts have all had their eyes trained on initial unemployment claims, both because they tell us about the ongoing scale of the crisis and because they’re one of the rare weekly indicators of the economy at large. Some economists think this weekly trend of massive unemployment numbers includes industries that weren’t hit hard at first but are now beginning to feel the ripple effects of the recession as it spreads through the economy. “Job separations will likely remain high for a while, as softer demand spills over into industries not initially directly affected by shutdowns,” Citigroup economist Andrew Hollenhorst told Reuters. (This is corroborated by sources such as the hiring site Indeed, which has consistently seen 30 to 40 percent fewer jobs posted than the norm since late March.)