US unemployment rate hits 14.7% – the highest rate since the Great Depression – as more than 20.5 million people across the country suffer job losses amid COVID-19

Emily Crane – Daily Mail.com May 8, 2020

• The US economy lost a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April with the unemployment rate spiking to 14.7 percent amid the COVID-19 pandemic
• Figures released Friday in Labor Department’s employment report show the steepest plunge since the 1930s Great Depression
• The latest figures do not account for the many people who lost their jobs in April and didn’t look for another one 
• The unemployment rate is actually 20 percent if people, including many who have been furloughed workers, are included in the figures
• It comes after nearly 3.2 million laid-off workers applied for jobless benefits in the week ending May 2 
• At least 33.5 million have now filed for jobless aid in the past seven weeks 
• The latest weekly claims data had no impact on the government’s April jobs report because it falls outside the period during which data was collected

The US economy lost a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April – the steepest plunge since the 1930s Great Depression and the starkest sign yet of how coronavirus is battering the world’s biggest economy.

The Labor Department’s closely watched monthly employment report released on Friday showed the unemployment rate spiked to 14.7 percent last month.

The report indicated that the vast majority of April’s job losses – roughly 90 percent – are considered temporary, a result of businesses that were forced to suddenly close but hope to reopen and recall their laid-off workers.

The jump in the unemployment rate, however, didn’t capture the full devastation wrought by the business shutdowns.

The Labor Department said millions of Americans were classified as employed in April even though their employers have closed down. These people should have been classified as on temporary layoff and therefore unemployed.

If they had been counted correctly, the unemployment rate would have been nearly 20 percent.

It also doesn’t include the millions who applied for jobless aid in the final week of April because the government collected data prior to those figures being released.

The enormous magnitude of job cuts has plunged the US economy into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s where the jobless rate reached 25 percent.

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