In the past five weeks, 26.4 million people have filed for unemployment nationwide due to the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
More workers in the U.S. have now applied for unemployment benefits in the past five weeks than the total number of people who reside in the country's 10 largest cities.
The Department of Labor released its latest report Thursday morning on the number of new jobless claims filed last week, showing that an additional 4.4 million workers submitted new claims. That brings the five-week total from the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic to 26.4 million, or more than all the jobs created since the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009.
To put that number in perspective, 26.4 million people is larger than the number of people that live in the country's 10 biggest cities combined. According to the latest government Census Bureau estimates from 2018 New York City , Los Angeles , Chicago , Houston , Phoenix , Philadelphia , San Antonio San Diego , Dallas , and San Jose, California , have a combined population of about 25.9 million.
The New York Stock Exchange is pictured on April 20 on Wall Street in New York City. Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics told CNBC that the unemployment rate now appears to have risen to 23 percent.There are also now more people in the U.S. who have filed for unemployment than the population of each individual state, with the exception of California and Texas. The largest state, California, has nearly 40 million residents, according to 2019 census estimates. Texas has about 29 million people.
"Further, job losses are ongoing. Based on [gross domestic product] forecasts, we project that the net decline in employment could exceed 30 million by the end of June," Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a Thursday morning blog post.
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