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Unemployment Claims Soar to Record High
March 26, 2020
Businesses shutting down amid the coronavirus have led to a record-high number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits. A massive 3.28 million claims were filed last week. This shatters the high hit during the Great Recession, which saw 665,000 claims in March 2009. It also easily dwarfs the all-time high of 695,000 in 1982.
The consensus estimate from Dow Jones’s survey of economists predicted 1.5 million new claims.
Some states have reported trouble keeping up with the tsunami of claims, with websites crashing from the unprecedented level of traffic. Pennsylvania has seen a twentyfold increase from the week before, rising from 15,439 claims to a staggering 378,908. New York saw claims increase five-times over, while California’s claims tripled.
