It’s tough to decide what’s more sobering – the continuing rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths, or the continuing rise in lost jobs.
Another 20.5 million jobs were lost in our nation in April, sending the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent – “a snapshot unseen since the Great Depression,” The New York Times wrote Friday.
“The only comparable period is when unemployment reached about 25 percent in 1933, before the government began publishing official statistics. Then as now, workers from a variety of backgrounds found themselves with few prospects for quickly landing a new job,” according to The Times.
The share of the population with a job, at 51.3 percent, was the lowest on record. And at a time when the virus guidelines call for social distancing and staying at home, many are unlikely to find new jobs – or even look for work. Some 80 percent of the unemployed said they had been temporarily laid off and expect to return to their jobs in coming months.
President Donald Trump, too, continues to say the crisis will recede as swiftly as it arrived.