The unemployment rate amid the coronavirus crisis has officially reached the highest level since the Great Depression.
The Labor Department on Friday said that 20.5 million jobs were lost in April, and the unemployment rate climbed to 14.7 percent. This staggering report showed that a decade of job gains were wiped out in just one month, The Washington Post reports.
"This is the biggest and most acute shock that we've seen in post-war history," Bank of America economist Michelle Meyer told CNBC. During the Great Recession, the unemployment rate's peak was 10 percent, The New York Times reports.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The Labor Department report notes, however, that "if the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to 'other reasons' ... had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been almost 5 percentage points higher than reported."
The Labor Department's March report showed the unemployment rate climbing to 4.4 percent from 3.5 percent in February. Weekly data released by the Labor Department previously showed that more than 33 million Americans have filed initial jobless claims over the course of seven weeks, a number that's equivalent to about 21 percent of the labor force, per CNN. The ADP National Employment Report also said earlier this week that 20.2 million private sector jobs were lost from March to April.
President Trump, who was live on Fox & Friends the moment the report was released, described the unemployment numbers as "fully expected" and "no surprise."
-
How Putin misunderstood his past victoriesIn Depth Though Vladimir Putin has led Russia to a number of grisly military triumphs, they may have misled him when planning the invasion of Ukraine
-
Codeword: August 18, 2025The Week's daily codeword puzzle
-
Sudoku medium: August 18, 2025The Week's daily medium sudoku puzzle
-
Trump said to seek government stake in IntelSpeed Read The president and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan reportedly discussed the proposal at a recent meeting
-
US to take 15% cut of AI chip sales to ChinaSpeed Read Nvidia and AMD will pay the Trump administration 15% of their revenue from selling artificial intelligence chips to China
-
NFL gets ESPN stake in deal with DisneySpeed Read The deal gives the NFL a 10% stake in Disney's ESPN sports empire and gives ESPN ownership of NFL Network
-
Samsung to make Tesla chips in $16.5B dealSpeed Read Tesla has signed a deal to get its next-generation chips from Samsung
-
FCC greenlights $8B Paramount-Skydance mergerSpeed Read The Federal Communications Commission will allow Paramount to merge with the Hollywood studio Skydance
-
Tesla reports plummeting profitsSpeed Read The company may soon face more problems with the expiration of federal electric vehicle tax credits
-
Dollar faces historic slump as stocks hit new highSpeed Read While stocks have recovered post-Trump tariffs, the dollar has weakened more than 10% this year
-
Economists fear US inflation data less reliablespeed read The Labor Department is collecting less data for its consumer price index due to staffing shortages
