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To make it sure that I understand it correctly: this is not the total number of unemployed people, but the number of people who became unemployed recently and now file the forms? Then that number is gigantic, wow.

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The USA is home to ~340 million people (many people here illegally aren't counted). Only about 63.4% (~215M) of them work.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-parti...

Labor force participation rate does not include children, so the 215M number is actually much lower

This is the number of people that filed for unemployment in the last week. A staggering number. Just seven days of data.

Seven days, that's horrible. Let's hope these people quickly find work again.

A lot of these filers are in the restaurant/bar industry, and are being "laid off", and told to file, and then will be rehired when the quarantine ceases.

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