NEW YORK (AP) — Bleak new figures Thursday underscored the worldwide economic pain inflicted by the coronavirus: The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose past a staggering 30 million, while Europe's economies are in a record slide.
The statistics are likely to turn up the pressure on politicians to ease the lockdowns that have closed factories and other businesses.
In the United States, government figures showed that 3.8 million laid-off workers applied for jobless benefits last week, raising the total to about 30.3 million in the six weeks since the outbreak took hold.
The layoffs amount to 1 in 6 American workers and encompass more people than the entire population of Texas. Some economists say that when the unemployment rate for April comes out next week, it could be as high as 20% — a figure not seen since the Depression of the 1930s, when joblessness peaked at 25%.
And the number of job losses could be even higher than the unemployment claims would suggest, because some people did not apply and others couldn't get through to their states' overwhelmed systems. A poll by two economists found that the U.S. may have lost 34 million jobs.
“This is the saddest day for the global economy we have ever seen” in the 50 years that economists at High Frequency Economics have been following economic data, they wrote in a report.
The virus has killed more than 220,000 people worldwide, including 61,000 in the U.S., according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Confirmed infections globally topped 3.2 million, including 1 million in the U.S., but the true numbers are believed to be much higher because of limited testing, differences in counting the dead and concealment by some governments.
In other developments:
— Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious-diseases expert, said he expects federal approval for the first drug to prove effective against the coronavirus to happen “really quickly.” Remdesivir, made by California's Gilead Sciences, hastened the recovery of COVID-19 patients in a major government study, and it might also have reduced deaths, according to Fauci.
— A 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship that arrived in New York City to great fanfare a month ago was set to leave after treating just 182 patients, because the surge of cases has fallen short of the doomsday predictions. The 24-hour number of deaths in New York state was reported at 306, the lowest in a month.
— With signs that the outbreak has stabilized in places around the U.S., President Donald Trump said he would not extend the White House’s social-distancing guidelines past their expiration Thursday. Those guidelines encouraged Americans to work from home and avoid restaurants, group gatherings and nonessential travel.
There was also bleak new data in Europe, where more than 130,000 people with the virus have died. The economy in the 19 countries using the euro shrank 3.8% in the first quarter of the year, the biggest contraction since the eurozone countries began keeping joint statistics in 1995.
France’s economy shrank an eye-popping 5.8%, the biggest quarterly drop since 1949. In Spain, the contraction was 5.2%. Germany is projecting that its economy, the eurozone’s biggest, will shrink 6.3% this year.
Joblessness in Europe has reached 7.4%, the statistics agency Eurostat reported. However, big job-protection programs are temporarily keeping millions of Europeans on payrolls, sparing them the record-setting flood of layoffs that is battering the U.S.
This week, the U.S. estimated that its economy shrank at a 4.8% annual rate in the first three months of the year, the sharpest quarterly drop since the 2008 financial crisis. But that barely captures the enormity of the downturn, because the lockdowns were not imposed until late March.
The current quarter is expected to be much worse, with a staggering 40% drop projected.
Across the U.S., many governors have taken tentative steps to begin reopening their economies. But surveys show that a large majority of Americans remain wary of returning to shopping, traveling and other normal economic activity.
No continent is being spared. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a 37% surge in cases in the past week — to more than 36,000 confirmed infections and over 1,500 deaths.
In Latin America, Brazil’s virtually uncontrolled surge of infections is igniting fears that construction workers, truck drivers and tourists will spread COVID-19 to neighboring countries that are doing a far better job of controlling the virus.
As economies splutter back to life and workers adapt to the strangeness of new barriers designed to keep them apart, governments are watching infection rates, wary of a second wave.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said authorities will allow religious services to resume and let museums, zoos, galleries and playgrounds reopen, but stressed that people must remain “disciplined” to ensure that the gains in curbing the outbreak aren’t undone.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to close all beaches and state parks starting Friday after people thronged the seashore during a sweltering weekend, ignoring social distancing.
In Michigan, hundreds of protesters returned to the Capitol to denounce Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-home order and business restrictions. Whitmer, a Democrat, wants Republican lawmakers to extend her emergency declaration by 28 days.
Protesters carried signs reading, “Shut down the lockdown” and “No work no freedom.”
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Rugaber reported from Washington, Leicester from Paris. AP reporters around the world contributed to this report.
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