The White House and Congress have tried to arrest the downturn, but the coronavirus pandemic keeps pushing Americans out of the labor force.
More than 4.4 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, according to the Labor Department, a signal that the tidal wave of job losses continues to grow during the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s the fifth-straight week that job losses were measured in the millions. From March 15 to April 18, 26.5 million have probably been laid off or furloughed. Jobless figures on this scale haven’t been seen since the Great Depression. The number of jobs lost in that brief span effectively erased all the jobs created after the 2008 financial crisis.
The new weekly total comes on top of 22 million Americans who had sought benefits in previous weeks, a volume that has overwhelmed state processing systems. Economists estimate that the national unemployment rate sits between 15 and 20 percent, much higher than it was during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009. The unemployment rate at the peak of the Great Depression was about 25 percent…
Read the full piece in The Washington Post here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/23/economy-coronavirus-unemployment/