14 May 2020

Another 3 Million New Jobless Claims

So the total since mid March, about 8 weeks, is 36½ million new jobless claims.

Assuming that the normal level of claims is 225,000 (PDF link, see page 6), this means that the excess initial unemployment claims is 36,500,000-225,000×8=34,700,000 excess unemployment claims.

The labor force was roughly 165 million with 3% unemployment, which gives about 170 million working or looking for work.

Just subtracting the 34.7 million excess claims, and a lot of people have not been processed, gives 23.4% unemployment (U3).

The above is just spit-balling by me, but it is not unreasonable to expect the unemployment rate to top 20% right now.

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