Both the one-week rise and the total number of
applications were far above the levels seen over
the past year as the country’s unemployment
rate fell to a half-century low of 3.5%.
Economists are predicting a surge in layoffs as
efforts to contain the spreading coronavirus
result in people losing jobs in a variety of
industries from restaurants and bars to airlines
and hotels.
“The more aggressive coronavirus containment
measures imposed in recent days involving
the near total shutdown of the retail, leisure
and travel sectors in some parts of the country
are clearly starting to have a dramatic impact,”
said Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist at
Capital Economics.
He forecast that jobless benefit applications
could easily exceed 1 million within the next
few weeks, exceeding the weekly peak of
665,000 applications during the 2007-2009
Great Recession.
There have been a number of states such as
Ohio reporting huge jumps in unemployment
applications already. The Trump administration
and Congress are scrambling to produce a
support package of around $1 trillion which
would provide checks to Americans who have
been affected by the virus and support for
small businesses and big companies such as
the airlines.
A proposal from Treasury has suggested
spending $500 billion to provide checks for
Americans who have suffered economic harm
because of the virus.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said
Thursday that the administration hopes to start