.MaddowBlog: For sixth straight week, millions file for unemployment benefits
In the week ending April 25, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 3,839,000, a decrease of 603,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 15,000 from 4,427,000 to 4,442,000.The total from the newest report is lower than the totals from the previous few weeks, which may look like marginal progress. But a better way of looking at this is to say that things are getting worse slightly slower.
Indeed, keep the cumulative effects in mind: these 3.8 million Americans who've just filed for jobless benefits are in addition to the totals from the last few weeks. In other words, more than 30 million Americans have filed initial unemployment claims since mid-March -- a total unlike anything the country has seen in modern times.
This offers a hint of just how dreadful the upcoming unemployment rate will be: the U.S. labor force, as of a few months ago, was roughly 165 million people. Over the last month, roughly 18% of those Americans have lost their jobs. Add those totals to the people who were already unemployed and it becomes easy to see why the actual unemployment rate right now is almost certainly inching past 20%.
It is worth emphasizing that these depression-level numbers coincide with the recent passage of an economic aid package that included significant resources for the unemployed. As we recently
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