Growing numbers of Americans lose jobs
Whilst the number of layoffs in the US has slowed down, according to figures released at the end of April, in only six weeks, 30 million people in the country have applied for unemployment benefits, with the numbers still rising. Figures from the labor department released on April 28th revealed a fourth consecutive week of declining claims. Whilst the trend is encouraging, US unemployment is still on track to reach levels unseen since the Great Depression, which was “by some calculations the longest and deepest in the post-war period.”
Whilst there is hope that the number of layoffs may slow down further as businesses begin to open up, there is also the threat that easing the quarantine rules could start a wave of new infections and shutdowns. At the end of April, Boeing made an announcement that Covid-19 has caused “a body blow” to the business, triggering the company to consider laying off 16,000 people, which equates to 10% of its workforce. The latest Department of Labor figures also reveal that the insured unemployment rate is at 12.4% for the week ending 18 April, which is the highest percentage recorded since the department started releasing the figures.
“On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will report on US employment and unemployment for April—a mid-April snapshot. […] [Since] between March 14 and April 18, more than 26 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits, it seems certain that Friday’s report will show a sharp deterioration in labor market conditions,” Katharine G. Abraham, Director, Maryland Center for Economics and Policy, writes.
However, she also believes that the data to be released on Friday might potentially be less reliable and more difficult to interpret than would ordinarily be the case. Whilst in a typical month, the BLS employment report provides information that is widely recognized as among the most reliable provided by any government agency worldwide, this month, there is likely to be more than the usual amount of uncertainty about exactly what the data reveals. “To make sense of the April unemployment numbers, we should look not only at unemployment but also at the counts of non-employed people who say they want work and are available but have not recently searched for a job,” Abraham adds.
Read Katharine G. Abraham’s opinion piece What is happening to unemployment in the post-Covid-19 labor market? and Daniel S. Hamermesh’s article The labor market in the US, 2000–2018.
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