“What we can do as a matter of policy, is make sure that we maximize the chance that we come out of this as quickly as possible.” Former Treasury Sec. Jack Lew says the recovery will determine “where the economy goes in the future.”
Some two-thirds of the drop came in the hospitality industry, particularly bars and restaurants forced to close during the economic shutdown.
Those higher unemployment rates come amid a tumble in the labor force participation rate to 62.7%, a 0.7 percentage point fall and the lowest since August 2018 for a number that had been gradually rising. "Today's numbers are shockingly bad and an understatement of the damage already done to the U.S. economy," said Nick Bunker, economic research director at job search site Indeed. "If this is an indication of what was happening before the full force of the crisis hit, then it will be hard to come up with the words to describe the numbers in future months."
"My sense is that when we get April data a month from now, we'll see that the economy lost somewhere between 10 and 15 million jobs," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said earlier this week. "That would be consistent with the initial claims for unemployment insurance data that we're getting."
Workers who reported being on temporary layoff more than doubled to 1.8 million, while those who said they were jobless for less than five weeks surged 75% to 1.5 million. The ranks of permanent job losers grew by 177,000 to 1.5 million.
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