by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
I am not trying to make a political statement with this article. I am simply pointing out that the number of Americans that have filed initial claims for unemployment benefits in 2020 is almost unimaginable. In 2016, a total of 62,984,828 votes were cast for Donald Trump. Here in 2020, a total of 63,600,000 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits since the middle of March. So the number of Americans that have filed for unemployment during this pandemic is now greater than the number of Trump voters in the last election. Of course if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, we would be saying the exact same thing about her in a couple of weeks. Back in 2016, she received a grand total of 65,853,514 votes. The point is not to assign political blame to one side or the other, because neither side knew that COVID-19 was coming. Rather, I am trying to get my readers to understand that we have witnessed a collapse in employment during this pandemic that is absolutely unprecedented.