Coronavirus casualty not many people are talking about: 10 years of job creation (22 million jobs) wiped out in just one month

While a lot of attention has been focused the number of deaths from the deadly coronavirus, less attention is paid to millions of Americans that have lost their jobs. Just for a moment, try to wrap your head around this: In the last three weeks alone, 16,780,000 jobless claims filed, additional 5,500,000 forecast today would equal 22,280,000.

According a Thursday report from the Labor Department, 5.245 million more Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week. That brings the total number of unemployed Americans to just over 22 million,  wiping out all the job gains since the Great Recession.

That number is a little higher than the total number of jobs created since Great Recession, which stood at 22,088,000. In other words, in just in one month, 10 years of job creation was wiped out because of coronavirus. Let that just sink for a moment. It is sad and heart breaking that people losing their jobs not as a result of any faults of their own but because of an unseen enemy that started out of Wuhan, China.

With no concrete date and signs of when people are allowed to return back to work, the jobless situation is likely going to get worse before its better. Yesterday, Abbott Laboratories launched a new coronavirus antibody test that can test if you’ve ever had coronavirus, could test up to 20 million screenings in June.

According to the experts, the test might exempt you from social distancing—if you pass and potentially start allowing people to return back to work. Infectious disease experts have said that such antibody screenings, also called serological tests, will be needed to track the spread of the coronavirus in the United States and elsewhere, and to develop containment strategies.

Since this pandemic started, food banks across the country have seen increase in demand for food and basic items. For example, Feeding America saw increase in demand from 98% of its member banks, according to a recent survey. Home bound with no jobs, millions of Americans are struggling to take care of the families. According to data from Bankrate’s 2019 Financial Security Index, half of American adults have either no emergency savings or not enough to cover three months of living expenses.