The NY Times reports the surge — 281,000 new claims — reflects a crushing new reality: Any hopes that businesses could keep their staffs largely intact have quickly evaporated.
“I started laying people off this Monday, not knowing how bad it was,” said Barry Rosenberg, founder of Vending One, a Los Angeles company that stocks and maintains vending machines and self-serve kiosks in malls, office complexes, jails, schools and casinos. “On Tuesday, we started restricting hours. By next Monday, I don’t know that they’ll be any work.”
Jon Blomer, who services accounts and refills those machines, was one of the first to lose his job. “There’s not enough hours to go around, and everyone’s been there longer,” said Blomer, 33, who has worked for at Vending One for a year.
As employers and workers at global conglomerates and kitchen-table offices anxiously grapple with the economy’s partial shutdown, officials in Washington are racing to design a $1 trillion rescue plan. Senate Republicans put forward a blueprint on Thursday that includes loans to big corporations and small businesses, large corporate tax cuts, and $1,200 checks for taxpayers.
In the meantime, tens of thousands of laid-off workers like Blomer are jamming government websites and phone lines to apply for unemployment benefits.
The report from the Labor Department offered just a pinhole glance of mounting job losses.
In Connecticut, 30,000 claims were filed between Friday evening and Tuesday, compared with a total of 2,500 all last week. This week, Illinois received over 41,000 claims on Monday and Tuesday compared with 4,445 in those two days last year. And in Michigan, 5,419 claims were filed in February’s final week; so far this week, the state is fielding 5 1/2 times as many. In some states, overwhelmed systems collapsed.
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