Unemployment Filings Exceeded 3 Million Last Week

Unemployment claims skyrocketed to nearly 3.3 million last week, compared to 282,000 filings the prior week. The number of Americans that have lost jobs due to the coronavirus is staggering. As governments shutter nonessential businesses and ask employees to stay home, companies have been forced to lay off and cut jobs for an unprecedented number of workers.

To get a better idea of how bad the situation is, the most applications filed in a single week in the past 50 years of government tracking was less than 700,000. That was in the week ending Oct. 2, 1982. The 3.3 million filings last week do not even count those workers who are part-time, gig workers, independent contractors or self-employed and are not qualified for unemployment benefits.