More than 6.6 million Americans have filed for Unemployment benefits. 6.6 million Americans filing for unemployment smashes all previous records for unemployment numbers. As a result, the Democratic National Convention has been postponed, and worldwide, the number of infected is approaching 1 million.
The first cases of Coronavirus appeared in the United States just over a month ago, and President Trump mostly dismissed the threat. Wall Street did too, while it continued to chug along.
The economic disaster that would happen just one month later – no one was taking seriously. Today, the Labor Department reporter the loss of 10 million jobs in just two weeks. Wall Street has imploded – and the global economy is shaking as the fallout of the pandemic reaches into every country.
Hopes of a brief downturn followed by a return to the status quo have faded. Now, fear has returned that the world may be on the cusp of an economic shock unseen since the Great Depression. There’s good reason for this – the previous high for weekly unemployment filings was 695,000 in 1982.
The virus outbreak has done more damage in 2 weeks than the worst months of the 2008 financial crisis.
The impact has had a global effect as well. Nearly one million Britons have applied for welfare payments in the space of two weeks. Austria has clocked its highest unemployment rate since the end of World War II. French workers have applied for subsidies even as the government embarks on an ambitious plan to keep businesses afloat.
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