Economy, Top Stories

Unemployment Rate At Highest Level Since The Great Depression

By News & Guts
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HIALEAH, FLORIDA - APRIL 08: Miguel Diaz, who works for the City of Hialeah, hands out unemployment applications to people in their vehicles in front of the John F. Kennedy Library on April 08, 2020 in Hialeah, Florida. The city is distributing the printed unemployment forms to residents as people continue to have issues with access to the state of Florida’s unemployment website in the midst of widespread layoffs due to businesses closing during the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 14.7%. The Labor Department reports 20.5 million jobs were lost in April. To put that in perspective, NPR writes:

The highest monthly job loss before this was 2 million in 1945, as the nation began to demobilize after World War II. The worst monthly job loss during the Great Recession was 800,000 in March 2009.

The AP adds:

The collapse of the job market has occurred with stunning speed. As recently as February, the unemployment rate was a five-decade low of 3.5%, and employers had added jobs for a record 113 months. In March, the unemployment rate was just 4.4%

The government’s report Friday noted that many people who lost jobs in April but didn’t look for another one weren’t even counted in the unemployment rate. The impact of those losses was reflected in the drop in the proportion of working-age Americans who have jobs: Just 51.3%, the lowest on record.