- Friday’s April nonfarm payroll report from the Labor Department was dismal — the US economy lost a record 20.5 million jobs, and the unemployment rate surged to 14.7%.
- “The April employment report — if there was any lasting hope for a V-shaped recovery, this dashed it,” Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Business Insider.
- Here are eight charts beyond the headline that show just how much of a hit the labor market has taken amid the coronavirus pandemic.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
The April jobs report released by the Labor Department Friday paints a dismal picture of the US labor market, which has been devastated by sweeping shutdowns to curb the spread of coronavirus.
The Friday report showed that in one month, the US economy shed 20.5 million jobs, the most ever, and that unemployment skyrocketed to 14.7%. The report shows how quickly the coronavirus pandemic hit the labor market — just two months earlier, in February, the unemployment rate was 3.5%, a 50-year low.
In one month, the US economy has lost more jobs than the 8.7 million erased during the great recession. The unemployment rate has also jumped over the Great Recession peak of 10% in October 2009 seemingly overnight.
“The April employment report — if there was any lasting hope for a V-shaped recovery, this dashed it,” Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Business Insider.
What’s perhaps most devastating about the April report is the extent to which it underestimates current economic pain. The unemployment rate doesn’t take into account, for example, workers who have had their hours cut because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In addition, it’s likely that the labor market will continue to be hit hard in the coming months. Since the survey period, which ends in the middle of the month, millions more Americans have filed for unemployment insurance benefits as layoffs persist.
But beyond the headline numbers, the report has a wealth of data that paints a dire picture of the current US economic situation. Here are eight charts from the eye-popping report that show just how hard the US labor market has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic:
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