Coronavirus wipes out a decade of job gains leaving 22 million Americans unemployed

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 18 photo, visitors to the Department of Labor are turned away at the door by personnel due to closures over coronavirus concerns in New York. Americans are seeking unemployment benefits at unprecedented levels due to the coronavirus, but many are finding more frustration than relief.
FILE - In this Wednesday, March 18 photo, visitors to the Department of Labor are turned away at the door by personnel due to closures over coronavirus concerns in New York. Americans are seeking unemployment benefits at unprecedented levels due to the coronavirus, but many are finding more frustration than relief.(John Minchillo/AP)


In the month since President Trump declared a national emergency, the coronavirus outbreak has erased more than a decade of record job creation, leaving 22 million Americans out of work.
The US Labor Department on Thursday announced an estimated 5.2 million people filed unemployment claims for the week ending in April 10, marking one of the larger spikes amid the global pandemic. While the figure is bleak, it’s still a decline from last week’s 6.6 million and down from the record 6.9 million people that filed the week ending March 28.
Job losses in the last four weeks have also wiped out all of the 22.8 million jobs gained in the 10 years since the Great Recession, which stretched from 2007 to 2009.
The staggering unemployment rate has not reached this level in the United States since the Great Depression. Almost 15% of the America workforce have lost their jobs since the economy was ground to screeching by the coronavirus in Mid-March.
Nearly the entire nation is living under some type of stay-at-home order and almost all states have closed non-essential businesses to curb the spread of the illness.
The government-mandated shutdowns have hurt nearly every type of business, especially those in the tourism and service industries. Its forced hotels, restaurants and retailers to lay off millions as companies struggle to pay bills amid a complete vanishing of incoming revenue.

As of Thursday, more than 2 million people worldwide have been infected with COVID-19. Of those confirmed cases, nearly 630,000 are in the United States.

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