Coronavirus kills 20.5 million US jobs in April in historic collapse
- The US unemployment rate hit 14.7 per cent in April, the highest since the Great Depression, as the pandemic battered the economy
- Trump says the numbers were not a surprise
An unprecedented 20.5 million jobs were destroyed in April in the world’s largest economy, driving the unemployment rate to 14.7 per cent compared to 4.4 per cent in March, the Labour Department said in its monthly report, the first to capture the impact of a full month of the lockdowns.
The US is home to the world’s largest and deadliest coronavirus outbreak, with more than 75,000 fatalities and 1.2 million cases reported as of Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The economic damage has been swift and stunning.
In the two years of the global financial crisis, the world’s largest economy lost 8.6 million jobs and the unemployment rate peaked at 10 per cent in October 2009. During the recovery, from February 2010 to February 2020, 23 million positions were created.
The plunge in non-farm payroll employment last month was the largest ever recorded dating back to 1939, while the jobless rate saw its highest and biggest increase dating back to 1948, the report said.