The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits surged to a record of more than 3 million last week as strict measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic brought the country to a sudden halt.That's less than 1 percent of the US population.
Source
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending March 7 was 2,006,363, a decrease of 80,856 from the previous week. There were 2,039,322 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2019.
In New Zealand, before the pandemic, there were 147,000 jobseekers claiming benefits - 3% of our population.
Yes there are all sorts of barriers to even claiming an unemployment benefit in the US, and over 3 million new claims in a week is extraordinary but some context is always useful and interesting.
We won't know here until later in April how our numbers are faring (unless a non-normal announcement is made). And then the numbers on Jobseeker will have to be set alongside the numbers on wage subsidies to provide a real measure of compensated 'unemployment'.
What we do know is that MSD is struggling to deal with the level of inquiry and application from individuals. People are reporting wait times of over two hours which is impossible to accommodate for some mobile phone users.
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