Business

Coronavirus puts 4.4 million more out of work, bringing crisis total to 26 million

The number of Americans put out of work by the coronavirus crisis grew to 26.4 million last week as another 4.4 million people applied for unemployment benefits, new federal data show.

That suggests the pandemic has more than wiped out the 22.1 million jobs the US economy had added since October 2010, when the nation started a streak of job growth that came to a screeching halt last month.

The workers who have filed initial jobless claims in the last five weeks account for about 16 percent of the American workforce. If they formed their own state, it would be the nation’s third-largest by population with more people than New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania combined.

The pandemic’s impact on the labor force is “close if not very close to the Great Depression level roughly a century ago,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank, told The Post. “These are just massive job losses on a scale that we’ve never seen before, and it could cause a lot of problems.”

Thursday’s report from the US Department of Labor showed the seasonally adjusted number of filings dropping for the third straight week from last week’s 5.2 million. That indicates the coronavirus-fueled layoffs peaked in the last week of March, when more than 6.8 million people applied for benefits.

Filings in New York fell to 204,716 last week from 394,701 the week before, putting it among the 43 states that saw decreases in initial claims, according to the feds.

But the staggering number of people receiving continued unemployment checks shows the pain is far from over. It surged by about 4 million to a seasonally adjusted total of 15.9 million — the highest number on record — in the week ending April 11, the feds said Thursday.

There won’t be light at the end of the tunnel until that number starts to drop, according to Daniel Alpert, managing partner at Westwood Capital.

“At whatever point we see that number turn, that’s the real key, because people will be in theory being rehired in jobs that are now made available to work,” said Alpert, who helped create the US Private Sector Job Quality Index measuring the health of the labor market.

The feds’ weekly jobless claims report has become a closely watched indicator of how deeply the coronavirus crisis has gutted the US economy. Most of the country is living under lockdown measures meant to stem the spread of the virus, which have forced many businesses to close and cut workers.

The most recent report coincided with the government’s monthly employment survey, which will offer a broader view of the job losses when it’s released next month. Experts expect it to show the unemployment rate skyrocketing to 15 percent or higher from 4.4 percent in March.

A woman picks up an unemployment form in Florida.
A woman picks up an unemployment form in Florida.AP

Economists expected 4.2 million jobless claims last week as states continued to work through massive piles of applications. New York’s state Labor Department said this week that it had reduced its backlog of application phone calls from 275,000 to roughly 4,300.

But some New Yorkers have said they’re still waiting for checks after filing claims weeks ago — if they were able to get through at all.

Merk, an accountant in the Bronx, said his stepfather Behaylu has been unable to submit an unemployment claim since he was laid off March 16 from his job at Midtown’s Grand Hyatt hotel.

The Labor Department has promised to call back workers who need to finish their claim over the phone. But Behaylu, 64, is still waiting for the phone to ring about a month after getting as far as he could online, according to his stepson, who is helping him through the process because he doesn’t speak English well.

“He’s one of the earliest ones to be unemployed, so just thinking of the math there, it wouldn’t make sense for his case to take this long,” said Merk, who declined to give his last name because of privacy concerns.

With Post wires