No one has modelled an economic lockdown before: no one knows what to expect. But the daily data is shocking, and points to a huge economic effect. In Britain, nearly 500,000 people applied for welfare (Universal Credit) over the last nine days. In America, the number of people applying for unemployment benefits surged to an unprecedented three million last week.
What has yet to be calculated (but urgently needs to be) is the human cost of all this
We simply have not seen anything like this before, not even during the financial crash: the Covid crash has led to 3,283,000 claims – quadruple the previous record-high of around 700,000 in 1982. This surge in applications is one of the biggest indicators so far of Covid-19’s quick and devastating impact on the world economy, and will give policymakers food for thought as they decide how long to continue with the lockdown.
What’s telling about the applications surge is not just the number, but the speed at which they’ve risen: three weeks ago, fewer
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