Deep breath. In the last five weeks, more than 24 million workers applied for unemployment insurance. That is more than one in seven workers. 1/

All else equal, job losses of this magnitude would translate into an unemployment rate of 18.3%. However, the official unemployment rate won't reflect that because people are only counted as unemployed if they are actively seeking work, which is currently impossible. 2/

What share of workers who applied for UI in this pandemic are actually getting benefits? The data to get at that are lagged a week, but it looks like about 71% are getting benefits. The rest—7 million of them—are still waiting. 3/

Note: DOL reports 2 figures for workers who applied for UI in the last 5 weeks, 26.5 mil (seasonally adjusted) and 24.4 mil (not adjusted). The way DOL does seasonal adjustments is weird right now, so I use the unadjusted numbers because that’s the actual number of claims. 4/

In the period before the coronavirus hit, just over a million workers applied for UI in a typical five-week span, and in the *worst* five-week stretch of the Great Recession, it was less than four million. In the last five weeks, it was more than 24 million. 5/

On the chart earlier in this thread, the last five observations look like they are in a vertical line because the x-axis covers 50+ years and the increase in the last five weeks is so extreme. This chart shows just the last year so you can see details. 6/