Roughly 22 million Americans have lost their jobs amid the coronavirus shutdown over the past four weeks — a figure that roughly equals the cumulative workforce of 23 states, as noted by the New York Times’ Peter Baker.
Why it matters: The U.S. has lost more jobs in the past month than it has gained in the 11 years since the end of the Great Recession, leaving a huge swath of the country financially vulnerable during a pandemic.
The total workforce of each of the 23 states, per Feb. 2020 labor force figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
- Alaska: 345,222
- Arkansas: 1,367,278
- Connecticut: 1,930,492
- Delaware: 489,107
- Hawaii: 669,073
- Idaho: 891,650
- Iowa: 1,752,764
- Kansas: 1,496,507
- Maine: 695,024
- Mississippi: 1,276,525
- Montana: 537,323
- Nebraska: 1,042,417
- Nevada: 1,559,531
- New Hampshire: 779,489
- New Mexico: 961,708
- North Dakota: 404,494
- Oklahoma: 1,844,281
- Rhode Island: 558,452
- South Dakota: 467,060
- Utah: 1,630,696
- Vermont: 340,147
- West Virginia: 806,517
- Wyoming: 294,173
The total: 22,139,920
*story by Axios