As the U.S. economy has slowed to a crawl due to COVID-19, countless businesses have shut their doors in accordance with the resulting social distancing policies. Consequently, many businesses have furloughed or laid off employees, and 22 million Americans have found themselves temporarily or permanently out of a job since the week of March 16.
While Americans have started to receive their government stimulus checks, those who are jobless will likely still struggle. However, not all states have experienced the same levels of unemployment due to the pandemic. To identify which states’ workforces have been hurt most by COVID-19, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia based on increases in unemployment claims. We used this data to rank the most impacted states in both the latest week for which we have data (April 6) and overall since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis (March 16). Read on for the results, additional commentary from a panel of experts and a full description of our methodology.
