22 Million Americans Have Filed Jobless Claims in First Month of Coronavirus Lockdowns

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As the coronavirus pandemic continues to decimate the global economy, the United States has seen another massive jump in unemployment claims the last week.

The Labor Department announced that 5.245 million more Americans have filed unemployment claims in the last 7 days. Combined with the last three weeks of social distancing lockdowns throughout the country, America has lost approximately 22 million jobs altogether in the last month.

The historic job loss is the worst since the Great Depression, and according to CNBC, this has wiped out pretty much all job gain America has seen since the 2008 Great Recession. The staggering losses come as President Donald Trump is considering plans to reopen the national economy in May.

The amount of job loss suggests that the economic stranglehold is starting to have an impact in more industries than when lockdowns first went into effect. Economists Dante DeAntonio and Daniel Zhao explained to NPR that the crisis is having a more discernible effect on a broader range of businesses.

“The speed and scale of job losses will be more similar to a natural disaster than a typical recession,” said. DeAntonio. Zhao followed up by remarking that the lockdowns erased jobs “at a rate that took the Great Recession nine months to match.”