This morning, the U.S. Department of Labor released the latest initial unemployment insurance claims data, showing another unprecedented spike. Nearly 10 million people across the country filed for unemployment insurance (UI) in the past two weeks: 3.3 million filed for unemployment in the week ending March 21, and another 6.6 million filed in the week ending March 28. For comparison, 282,000 claims were filed during the week ending March 14 when we were just starting to see the economic effects of the coronavirus. This greatly outnumbers the number of claims filed during any week since this data has been collected, including during the Great Recession.

The map in Figure A shows each state’s percentage change in “advance” initial unemployment claims for the week ending March 28 relative to the week ending March 14. Initial claims for the past week were unprecedented in virtually every state. The largest percentage increase occurred in Michigan, where the 311,000 new initial claims equaled a 5,728% increase over the number of initial claims filed in the week ending March 14. The smallest percentage increase was in Wyoming, where 4,675 new claims were filed—an 804% increase over the number of claims filed the week ending March 14, and still the largest number of claims ever filed in Wyoming. In fact, every state in the country reported its highest initial claims ever either last week or the week before.

California had the largest number of new initial claims with nearly 879,000 claims filed. Along with California, Pennsylvania (406,000), New York (366,000), and Michigan (311,000) saw more UI claims during that week than the entire country saw two weeks earlier. For context, the largest one-week number of initial claims filed in the Great Recession for the entire country was 665,000.

Over the past two weeks, over one million initial unemployment claims have been filed in California. Table 1 shows all the data from the map as well as the two-week sum of claims filed since March 14. As our colleague Heidi Shierholz notes, these claims do not reflect the full scope of workers who are out of work due to the coronavirus pandemic. The recent relief measures passed by Congress will help millions of Americans pay their bills during this crisis, but we will need additional stimulus measures to get the economy back on track once the spread of the virus is under control. Nearly 20 million workers are likely to be furloughed or laid off by July, with record unemployment rates in every state, even with the measures already enacted. Policymakers must act quickly to overcome the opportunities already missed to avert widespread job loss.  

Because so many workers rely on employer-provided health insurance, the job losses these two weeks likely caused 3.5 million workers to lose their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic—demonstrating the weaknesses of a system that links employment to health care coverage.

The massive labor market impacts of the coronavirus and social distancing can seem daunting and inevitable as we project how many workers will be laid off or furloughed, analyze the UI claims each week, and manage our expectations for tomorrow’s jobs report. But this upending of workers’ lives is not necessary. We do not have to trade our health for the health of our economy. Instead, we could turn to the government, as Britain and Denmark have done, to keep workers attached to the labor market and maintain most of their income.