As expected, the new unemployment numbers were not good.
Around 5 million more people filed first-time unemployment claims last week as the coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate the job market in every sector of the economy.
The staggering weekly number comes as President Donald Trump weighs plans to pull back on the social distancing measures that have shuttered businesses across the country and to reopen parts of the economy as soon as May 1.
State-mandated lockdowns have choked vast parts of the once-booming economy, kicking a total of 22 million people out of work and launching the nation into the worst crisis since the Great Depression.
In the last 4 weeks, the number of unemployment claims in the U.S. has reached 22 million — a toll not seen since the Great Depression.
“This is the deepest, fastest, most broad-based recession we’ve ever seen," said one economist. https://t.co/j5ReGMEm0k
— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 16, 2020
This is not the end. You can expect many more millions to file for unemployment next week and this is going to continue for awhile.
There is no flattening this curve. Many people are going to suffer and die because of this historic unemployment. It’s undoubtedly a far greater problem than the virus. There is no denying this.
We will likely be at somewhere between 30 percent to 50 percent unemployment when all is said and done. All because numerous state governors decided that they wanted to quarantine the healthy instead of the sick.
Historians are going to look back at this period of time as the most retarded period of time in all of human history.
