Yikes.
The coronavirus walloped Americans in April 2020, with 20.5 million job losses. That sent the unemployment rate to 14.7%, matching a World War 2 high of 14.7%.
Worse, “If millions of Americans who’ve been furloughed and expect to return to their jobs are counted, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the jobless rate would have almost 5 percentage points higher at nearly 20%,” says MarketWatch.
“This is the biggest and most acute shock that we’ve seen in post-war history. It’s a dramatic loss of output in a very short period of time,” added Michelle Meyer, head of U.S. economics at Bank of America, as quoted by CNBC.
· Hotels and restaurants saw 7.6 million job cuts.
· Retail unemployment fell by 2.1 million.
· The health industry saw nearly 1.5 million jobs cut.
· Manufacturers lost 1.3 million jobs.
· Construction lost 975,000 jobs.
· Financial Activities saw a loss of 262,000 jobs.
· Transportation and warehousing lost 584,100 jobs.
However, some analysts believe job losses will soon peak.
“Then we’ll get a bounce if we don’t get a second wave [of infections] in the summer months,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’ Analytics. “The unemployment rate will be cut in half by Election Day. Then we go nowhere fast until there’s a therapy we all feel good about — not only a vaccine but one that’s widely distributed.”
