According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics release of Initial unemployment claims, there were 6,606,000 claims for the week ending April 4th, 2020. The states with the largest increase of claims were California (+871,992), New York (+286,596), Michigan (+176,329), Florida (+154,171), Georgia (+121,680), Texas (+120,759), and New Jersey (+90,438).
This data comes after unemployment claims increased by 6,867,000 last week after being revised upwards. According to the release, for the last three weeks here have been 16,780,000 initial unemployment claims.
Millions of workers across the United States are losing their jobs and are forced to file for unemployment. Layoffs affected a host of different sectors of the economy including services, manufacturing, health care, and numerous others.
If the capitalist class is unable to realize profit in exchange and the economy is in a state of chronic overproduction, the workers are laid off as capitalist reproduction of the economy slows. For the second consecutive week over 6 million initial claims have been filed as the reserve army of the unemployed grows.
Due to recurrent economic crises of overproduction, capitalism dooms a portion of the working class to great misery and anxiety over the future. While defenders of the capitalist economic system are hopeful that the system will rebound, the trend in unemployment has been both persistent and substantial. Capitalist “full-employment” is a chimera in the sense that capitalist production necessitates unemployment to increase the rate of surplus value. It is imperative to understand that the capitalist economic system is inextricably linked to economic crises and the resulting unemployment.