New Delhi (NVI): More than 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits over the past 5 weeks, a result of the devastating effect of coronavirus pandemic on the US economy, according to media reports.
About 4.4 million people filed for unemployment in the last week alone, lower than the roughly 5.2 million people who filed the applications week before and down from the an all time high of 6 million applications in late March.
According to the International Monetary Fund, the economy is expected to contract 5.9 per cent this year in US. In just 5 weeks, the surge in unemployment claims has exceeded the number of jobs created in the near-decade of expansion that ended in February.
A record 16 million Americans received the benefits in the week ended on April 11, the US Department of Labour said. But many people have had trouble getting through with the state offices for processing of the applications.
As per the US media report, economists have warned that the unemployment rate by summer will be within the range of 25 per cent peak recorded in 1933 during the Great Depression.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump, has pushed to loosen restrictions on activity, despite fears that testing and other safety measures remain insufficient.
In addition to this, some states have already started to relax rules, while protests against lockdown orders have arisen elsewhere.
Even if jobless claims continue to fall away as reopening gets underway, the scars on America’s consumer-driven economy will linger for a long time.
At present, COVID-19 has claimed more than 50,000 lives in United States, with as many as 8,69,000 people infected due to the virus, which led to a large number of people filing for unemployment.
