Michael R. Strain, Columnist

The Many New Indicators of an Epic Job Collapse

Economists’ workforce surveys are more current than the government’s. And more terrifying.

April 30, 2020 at 1:03 PM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

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The job market is deteriorating rapidly, but no one knows by how much because government statistics are produced with a lag. Fortunately, several economists have created measures to light the darkness. While they disagree on some specifics, their overall conclusion is the same: The U.S. is experiencing an economic catastrophe.

The best “real time” government measure available for this unique circumstance is a weekly count of initial claims for unemployment insurance. The latest data were released this morning, and confirm that the labor market is deteriorating rapidly — 3.8 million workers filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week.