WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A staggering 16.8 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits in the last three weeks, with weekly new claims topping 6 million for the second straight time last week as the novel coronavirus outbreak relentlessly savages the economy.
Thursday’s weekly jobless claims report from the Labor Department, the most timely data on the economy’s health, strengthens economists’ expectations of job losses of up to 20 million in April and their conviction that the economy is in deep recession. It also underscored an urgent need for more fiscal stimulus to halt the free fall, economists said.
“In its first month alone, the coronavirus crisis is poised to exceed any comparison to the Great Recession,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, a website recruitment firm. “The new normal for unemployment insurance claims will be the canary in the coal mine for how long effects of the crisis will linger for the millions of newly unemployed Americans.”
The record unemployment insurance claims numbers are the result of businesses such as restaurants, bars and other social venues being shuttered as states and local governments implement tough measures to control the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 261,000 to a seasonally adjusted 6.606 million for the week ended April 4, the government said. Data for the prior week was revised to show 219,000 more applications received than previously reported, taking the tally for that period to an all-time high of 6.867 million.
All told, a record 16.78 million people have filed claims for jobless benefits since the week ending March 21.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims would fall to 5.250 million in the latest week, though estimates in the s