It took 10 years for the U.S. to create 20 million jobs after the housing crisis and recession. It took just one month for the coronavirus pandemic to destroy that job growth.

According to MarketWatch, more than 5 million citizens have filed for unemployment benefits for a third week in a row, bringing the total jobless claims in the past month to 22 million. The run of layoffs has broken the job market, closely matching all the employment gains since the end of the great recession from December 2007 to June 2009.

“In four weeks, all of the job gains from the decade-long recovery following the Great Recession have been erased,” senior economist Daniel Zhao of Glassdoor told MarketWatch.

African American Workers Cannot Choose Health Over Money

However, the job growth equation is not a direct correlation. For starters about 900,000 new jobless claims would have been filed in the past month even if there wasn’t a coronavirus crisis. Meaning fresh job losses tied to the pandemic are probably closer to 21 million.

The number may be higher still as many states have had issues processing unemployment claims and may have rejected people who were eligible for the federal bailout package. Therefore, states could be low-balling the number of claims.

“There is some evidence that people are falling through the cracks,” said Neil Dutta, head of economics at Renaissance Macro Research.

Source: Coronavirus Eliminates 10 Years Of Job Growth In One Month