An Early Read on New Claims for Unemployment

It's clear that the response to the Covid-19 virus is having a devastating impact on the economy, but most of the information so far is anecdotal.  As noted in a previous post, it will begin to show up in official data next Thursday (March 26), when the weekly report for new claims for unemployment for the week of March 16-20 is released.  Buzzfeed has a chart that contains state-level data for new claims for unemployment reported recently:

There were about 210,000 new claims a couple of weeks ago, 281,000 last week and almost 700,000 early this past week (based on estimates from 17 states for March 16-17 or March 16-18, depending on the state).  When you extend this to the whole week and for all 50 states, you can see why economists estimate the total for the week will be in excess of 2 million.  Here's the chart for the last half century.

source: markets.businessinsider.com

This is why Congress will pass a historic stimulus in the next day or two.