National unemployment rate 14.7%, likely much higher. Update 33.3 million unemployed.

So this only shows the first half of last month and the last half of the previous month so unless people get back to work in a very big way we can expect an even larger number next month.

https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

There's been a sharp spike in the number of companies laying workers off. A lot of states say they're suddenly flooded with unemployment claims. And as NPR's Jim Zarroli reports, some are not prepared for the onslaught.

JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: Lauren Egypt (ph) lost her job last month at a company that arranges freight shipments from China. She wasn't surprised. The coronavirus had cut a swath through her business. She didn't despair. She decided to concentrate on her side gig as an event planner, only that work has disappeared, too.

LAUREN EGYPT: And kind of in a 48-hour period, many of those contracts just kind of were eliminated, and people just started canceling events.

ZARROLI: So now she'll probably apply for unemployment insurance, joining the swelling ranks of workers who've watched a very strong job market buckle almost overnight. Eighteen percent of the people answering an NPR/Marist poll last week said someone in their household has lost a job or had their hours reduced. Joe Barela is executive director of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. He says with travel at a standstill, the skiing and tourism business in his state is hemorrhaging workers.

JOE BARELA: In a matter of five days, we now have these hundreds of thousands of people that - their lives were upended because their employment situation changed.

ZARROLI: Barela says there are plenty of warehouse and delivery jobs available for those who want them, and the state tries to steer unemployed people toward them. Still, many people have chosen to go online to file unemployment claims.

BARELA: Last Monday, the 9 of March, we know we had about 400 people initiate claims in the system. Yesterday morning, by 10 a.m., there were approximately 6,800 people trying to enter claims into the system.

ZARROLI: Barela says two weeks ago, it took maybe 10 minutes for callers to get through to the employment office. Now it takes an hour, and the same thing is happening all over the country. Ohio has had 78,000 people file for unemployment during the first three days of this week alone. All last week saw less than 10% of that. So many people were applying for unemployment that computers went down in New York, New Jersey and other states. Here is New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PHIL MURPHY: We saw a record number of unemployment insurance applications; so many, in fact, that the state's system crashed.

ZARROLI: One big reason so many states are unprepared is the unprecedented nature of the downturn. Heather Boushey, president of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, says a lot of people are able to wait out the virus by doing their jobs from home. But that's not possible for everyone.

HEATHER BOUSHEY: All those folks who have jobs that require a face-to-face contact - many jobs and services - there's no demand for that work right now. And quite frankly, it can be dangerous for folks to do those jobs.

ZARROLI: In many cities now, restaurants, schools, theaters and bars have been closed altogether. And the people who work there are suddenly finding themselves out of a job. In an interview with CNN, celebrity chef Tom Colicchio said the restaurant business is suffering.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TOM COLICCHIO: If 75% of the restaurants get back open after this, I'd be surprised. We're looking at a massive, massive problem. This is our generation's World War II moment, and we need to rise to it.

ZARROLI: And that's only a fraction of the damage taking place right now. Every day, more and more businesses are deciding to close their doors. Today Ford and General Motors said they were suspending production throughout North America until March 30 at the earliest.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/18/817934615/jobless-claims-spike-throughout-country-as-coronavirus-pauses-business

Full disclosure, I'm one of these claims. Life sucks, and it's scary right now financially speaking.

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEOizR-JDxzcESSoGgBzS-f8qGQgEKhAIACoHCAow2Nb3CjDivdcCMP3ungY?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

This link shows the new number.

New number is 17 million unemployed.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/09/831188179/17-million-americans-have-filed-for-unemployment-in-the-last-3-weeks

Update 4/17. 22 million people have now filed for unemployment. This wipes out a decade of job gains in the US.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/16/unemployment-claims-coronavirus/

Update 4/23. 26.45 million people have now filed for unemployment. The numbers are in the link below.

Thanks to Mattbbpl for this update.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/the-us-economy-has-now-erased-all-job-gains-since-the-great-recession.html

Update 4/30. 3.8 million more people have filed for unemployment, bring the number of unemployed people up to 30.3 million.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/30/weekly-jobless-claims-unemployment/

@Serraph105: Especially in the US where there is no real safety net.

I'm lucky that I'm salaried and have a job that allows me to either hide in my office or work from home.

Yeah my work might be closing (bar/bistro with a bottle shop) but the bottle shop won't be. So I'm the only person whose job is 100% safe at the moment. Everybody else is freaking out due to it.

Don't worry, UBI is no longer communism, so Trump is going to save people with the $1000 one time handouts.

My workplace makes trophies and we rely on sports and award events over the spring and summer for a huge portion of our yearly business. Turns out when events get cancelled en masse, they don't need your trophies anymore.

So yea we're looking at huge sales losses and we get to find out tomorrow who's getting laid off after asking for volunteer layoffs today. I didn't volunteer but my position is very non-essential, I'm definitely expecting I get picked. Either way a lot of the people staying on are looking at 32 hour work weeks for the next couple months.

Fun stuff.

Just give it another month or two.

Manufacturing and construction are still busy, because we are finishing old work.

But there hasn't been much new created the last few weeks, and there wont be for a little while

I guess you guys have once again to resort to socialism to save capitalism.

FDR was really the socalist-lite who saved capitalism.

Not sure about mine, I work at an Amazon warehouse. We are doing ok for now, I am on a leave though.

Yeah it's a joke. You can file for unemployment but that doesn't cover shit.

I am lucky enough to not only have a job, but to be an hourly employee that can still show up for work and get paid. Many others are not so lucky; in my field, we are closely related to hospitality (restaurants, bars, pubs, etc) and people have been furloughed or straight up laid off.

That's not counting actual, entire businesses that either have closed up shop or will have to if this shelter-at-home deal goes longer than needed.

While I am thankful for the government passing legislation (I think it's a 1000-dollar check? Not sure), a lot more needs to be done. I'm talking paying rent, helping out small businesses, and so on.

When this is all over, the only thing standing will be giant corporate stuff.

@Serraph105: "Full disclosure, I'm one of these claims. Life sucks, and it's scary right now financially speaking."

I'm sorry to hear that, truly. I hope this ends swiftly, and you come out stronger on the other side.

I said it weeks ago, the hysteria was going to be worse than the disease. And many of you were here calling for everything to be quarantined in response. This is what you get. I am not sure what you are thinking would fix all your problems. I have no issues since I work online. My brother is out of work for a few weeks, but still getting paid, and even if he wasn't, unemployment would still give him the same amount of money per week that he earned while working. The only thing making things more difficult really is the price of food and other necessities going up due to brainless panic buyers.

Unemployment is not full salary. If things weren't closed down the disease would be worse. See Italy and China as examples.

The GOP needs to fix this NOW. They cannot afford to entrench Millennials as Democratic constituents and risk losing Zoomers.

They can still publicly deny that stimulus works and wring their hands over the debt, but they privately need a big stimulus to stop the bleeding. It's existential to their party.

Sorry to hear about your situation and hope you on the other side of this, get back to a secure situation.

Not just their party but the country.

Try not to make this about partisan shit and no the democrats' idea is not something the GOP needs to accept like the GOP idea is not something the DNC have to accept.

The DNC and GOP need to sit down and work for once in their entire life and the history of America, together to make sure that once this is over, we are not met with companies going under in droves and millions unemployed.

But also let´s not panic too much, and go crazy with stimulus packages, let´s see how long they have to close down for and make plans accordingly.

@Jacanuk: Is discussing political ramifications on a political forum bad form?

As for not accepting Democratic ideas, you may have noticed that the GOP is proposing stimulus measures. Big ones. Because they know they work. And to their credit, Democrats are ALSO proposing stimulus measures and working with the GOP to pass some. Again, because they know they work.

No man it has to be us vs them. Forget cooperation.

Bit too late to tell people not to panic too much don't you think?

But at least this time it might not just be the rich that get part of the socialist pie.

Plus the amount you are allowed to collect varies from state to state. Indiana (I recently learned) only allows you to collect 10 grand for the entire year in increments of $390 at most per week of which they decide seemingly arbitrarily, and after having worked a single job since 2016, I don't even have 10 grand total available to me.

So lets go fully transparent, the amount that has been decided I need is $338/week, which is way way lower than what I was making before.

I've always maintained that it's not bad form. I sort of get it when we were doing this all on off-topic, but I don't believe any topic should be off limits or have a "wait period," and frankly I'm mostly happy that we have gotten away from that practice.

I really felt this way in 2008/2009, but it never really happened, proving Jac correct. Republicans didn't need to work together with democrats no matter how hard dems tried to get them to as there were no real political consequences for not doing so. The same is likely true today, dems don't need to work together with republicans regardless of how hard republicans try to get dems to work with them as there's probably no real political consequences for not doing so.

I guess we'll get to see which party is more committed to improving people's lives in times of a large scale crisis.

Is discussing political ramifications a bad form? ehmmm no because that is not what I said, I pointed out that making this about GOP or DNC is bad form in a time where both parties need sit down in a room separately and by video conference, work TOGETHER to find the best BIpartisan solution.

And sure stimulus packages work, which Obama showed when he used Bush´s plans. But again this is not about just pouring massive stimulus packages out, it´s about looking at the situation and finding the best solution

I hope you are joking?

Just filed. I was probably going to stay home anyway to look after my son. Wife still working, so that's good.

Good thing Doom Eternal launches tonight and I got a backlog of anime.

@vl4d_l3nin said:

Just filed. I was probably going to stay home anyway to look after my son. Wife still working, so that's good.

Good thing Doom Eternal launches tonight and I got a backlog of anime.

spring ( and maybe summer ) of george...

That joke is very much the state of affairs politically.

Leave it to you to get it...……..

Lol I know right Socialism is ok now apparently funny how fast things change when Cheeto in chief gives the green light but Sanders is a radical Socialist!!! and the Bernie bros just want free stuff.

Ya, or could it be that it would not be unlikely that it was not a joke.

A large part of our economy is service based and will be decimated by what is happening (and to come). We need to at least acknowledge that these people will AT THE MINIMUM require money to pay rent, keep the lights on, and food in their stomachs.

No one should be arguing if a stimulus and relief should be employed, but rather how large it should be. We hamstrung ourselves in 2008 by limiting that amount and I hope we learned from that mistake (we haven't).

Once again...…...see above. Damn give it up. You're lost.

Man, our economy is going to TANK.

Yup and some of us will make a fortune, so it´s not all bad.

Anyways jokes aside, yes the economy will be hit by this, but after it´s over, it will take a while but the economy will bounce back.

I've been trying to help my local restaraunt businesses by ordering take out and delivery as much as I can. This sucks and the economy is likely to hit a big downturn since people can't work, can't meet, can't spend money. The health impact of this virus can be huge, but so can the health impact of 20% unemployment. And this depression is going to be worldwide. The only ray of hope is that China's economy tanked when they had SARS but then recovered the second half of the year. Hope this does the same.

@sonicare: "The health impact of this virus can be huge, but so can the health impact of 20% unemployment."

Yup, it would absolutely dwarf 2008.

Im unfortunately a Musician and Corona completely wiped out my business.

@Jacanuk: I currently have money and the prime opportunity. Now if I had only a clue about prudential investment.

@sonicare: I highly doubt there will be a quick turnaround. The SARS epidemic is small and largely contained in China and HK compared to COVID-19.

China’s unemployment rate is around 6% at the moment, it has almost doubled in three months.

The outlook for individual economies will largely be dependent on the state of your economy now.

If your country already has low interest rates, then your Central Bank has lost its main monetary tool for stimulus.

If your government has a lot of debt, then it can’t do much in the way of fiscal policy either.

If the population has a high level of household debt, then the nation is particularly vulnerable to large scale bankruptcy as well.

Governments can obviously issue bonds and sell them, but given the situation is global buying up foreign bonds is hardly an attractive proposition.

Find a good Index ETF, one that tracks the S&P 500 or NASDAQ.

I recommend VOO (Vanguard has small fees, that's why I like them).

ETF's and mutual funds aren't sexy, but they're more or less the only for-sure thing you can invest money on.

Also, because all tech parts are made in China, tech stocks are super low. Look into AMD, Nvidia, Intel, and Apple in particular.

I know people, including myself, that are out of work. Fortunately, I did land a job related to what's going on with COVID-19 but others can't because they don't have the work experience and/or certification.

It sucks. People want to work but can't because their jobs/careers require face-to-face interaction, large groups of people, and so on. And it's not like they can do whatever they want while not working. They have to pay for rent, loans, utilities, bills, groceries, and etc.

It just goes to show you how fragile a country we are when we don't have a government that helps its own people and instead, resorts to blaming the poor, cutting welfare, cutting education, and so on all because, heaven-forbid, it's socialist.

I simply don't care what your opinions are on socialism is because you have countries around the world with affordable and universal healthcare, as well as affordable and free education, a generous welfare system, and they're doing just fine or even better. If it works, it works.

F*** your feelings.

Next week will be interesting. Goldman Sachs is predicting a rise in jobless claims by more than 2 million. BofA is predicting numbers close to 3 million. The maximum weekly high during the Great Recession was less than 700,000.

I'm doubting these numbers simply because they are apocalyptic in scope, but as more parties issue similar projections, my skepticism is wavering.

It may not be unrealistic at all. Unlike the Great Recession, everything is shutting down due to this pandemic. Economies cant work if people are stuck at home. The only hope is that this shut down and the virus are short lived. If we have a month in mandatory quarantine, things could really get in trouble. And it's not just one country, it's a large portion of the world. Crazy.

@sonicare: Some estimates say this could last 18 months. I expect a depression by summer. Hope I am wrong. The government could help keep that from happening, but Democrats seem perfectly happy trying to stick it to Republicans rather than help.

The 1000 $ check is not much help. It's better than nothing... And that's about it.

@thegreatchomp: "but Democrats seem perfectly happy trying to stick it to Republicans rather than help."

What's your basis for that claim?

Denmark has now implemented labor hoarding policies. UK seems to be heading down that path.

This is really just the beginning.

Quite fascinating how all it took is a virus to show us how our utterly fragile and limp our societies are. Imagine still worshipping capitalism after how all this is going to play out in the weeks and months ahead.