Unemployment claims declined for the week ending May 9, but the number of Americans now jobless thanks to the coronavirus lockdowns has continued to rise.
Another three million Americans filed for jobless benefits, the Labor Department reported this morning, a figure that brings claims filed since March 1 to 36.9 million.
The unemployment for the week ending May 2 was 15.7 percent, a slight increase over the week before.
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Unemployment claims dropped 195,000 to 2.981 million from the previous week’s 3.176 million, a 6.1-percent decline.
Despite that decline, unemployment kept rising because the government-mandated lockdowns aren’t finished wrecking the U.S. economy — the rate at which people are losing jobs is declining, but millions are still losing work.
The unemployment rate rose to 15.7 percent for the week ending May 2 from 15.4 percent the previous week.
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As far as claims across the state go, the top five states with the largest increases and decreases were:
Oklahoma +41,385
Maryland +25,318
New Jersey +16,360
Maine +8,452
Puerto Rico +4,600
Florida -258,243
Alabama -45,981
Georgia -38,213
Washington -37,289
Pennsylvania -33,451
After mass firings and layoffs began in March, unemployment claims exploded in the week ending March 21, when they rose 1,072 percent.
They increased another 107.6 percent during the week ending March 28 and peaked at 6.867 million, then began steadily declining. Since then, they have declined 56.5 percent through the week ending May 9. (Numbers below in thousands.)
March 7 — 211
March 14 — 282
March 21 — 3,307
March 28 — 6,867
April 4 — 6,615
April 11 — 5,237
April 18 — 4,442
April 25 — 3,867
May 2 — 3,176
May 9 — 2,981
Total — 36,985
As well, the list of states with the most unemployment during the week ending April 25 have a new leader, California. Other states enjoyed a drop in their unemployment rates. Vermont’s rate dropped 5.2 percent.
April 25 April 18
California 27.1 **
Michigan 23.1 21.7
Nevada 22 19.9
Pennsylvania 21.2 **
Rhode Island 20.6 20.4
Georgia 20.2 17.3
Vermont 20 25.2
New York 18.6 17.2
Washington 18 17.1
Connecticut 18 18.7
** Not on list
Will Mass Unemployment Finally End in Socialism?
Last week, when a total of 34 million had filed for unemployment, the department reported an unemployment rate of 14.7 percent, the highest since 1940 when the year ended with 14.6.
As well, as the Washington Post reported, the virus and ensuing lockdown has erased every job gained during the last 10 years.
Thus have Democrats in the U.S. House introduced another $3 trillion “virus relief” bill that would, if passed, raise the national debt to nearly $30 trillion.
State and local government would receive about $1 trillion in aid, and Americans would receive another $1,200 check to help pay bills. Some households could collect as much as $6,000.
The Democrats allotted $200 billion for “hazard pay” for essential workers, and another $175 billion to help recipients pay the rent and mortgage and for utilities.
But the bill would also expand government by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on myriad programs that have nothing to do with the Asiatic pathogen’s effects. The bill will spend $3.6 billion on state elections, and $400 million for “periodic censuses,” for instance.
The Legal Services Corporation will have an extra $50 million to file ideologically-motivated lawsuits, while the Federal Communications Commission gets an extra $24 million.
The U.S. Debt Clock puts the national debt at $25.2 trillion, and debt-per-taxpayer at $202,531.
U.S. Answer to China
The effects of the virus, which include more than 1.4 million cases and 84,000 deaths in the United States alone (officially), inspired two elected officials, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas, both Republicans, to introduce bills that would permit America to sue the Chinese Reds for damages.
The “Holding the Chinese Communist Party Accountable for Infecting Americans Act of 2020” says China’s Reds caused and lied about the global pandemic that has infected nearly 4.5 million and killed nearly 300,000 globally.
The bill indicts the Chinese for destroying virus research and lab samples and trying to block the dissemination of information that counters the narrative of China’s communist government.
U.S. intelligence officials have said the virus leaked from a poorly run lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Subsidized by U.S. tax money, including funds from pandemic response leader Anthony Fauci’s federal allergy and infectious disease agency, the lab greatly concerned U.S. science diplomats.
Image: da-kuk/iStock/Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
