Key Highlights
- Another 3.2M workers filled for unemployment for the first time last week
- Total number of jobs lost in last 7 weeks now stands at a minimum of 33.5M
- This was fifth weeks unemployment filings have fallen
- Claims number comes one day before April jobs report expected to show unemployment at approximately 16^
Yet another dismal week for unemployment…last week’s unemployment filings hit 3.2M. The total number of workers who have lost jobs in the last seven weeks now stands at a minimum of 33.5M.
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The April jobs report, due out May 8, is expected to show a jaw-dropping jump in unemployment to approximately 16%.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is projecting unemployment to average close to 14% during April, May and June. Moody’s Investors Service is a bit more pessimistic in its predictions that unemployment will rise to 15% in Q2 2020. (During the great Depression, unemployment averaged +14% from 1931-1940.)
Elise Gould, senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, believes that all these projections are low. Gould said, “I think we are not near the peak yet. I think we are still going to see additional job losses show up in the data for May, for June. Unfortunately, I don’t think this has gotten as bad as it will get yet.”
An additional indicator of the pandemic’s economic damage already sustained was the ADP Research Institute Report that said the private sector alone lost +20.2M jobs last month. This kind of private sector job loss has no comparison. The previous record of private sector job loss came during the height of the Great Recession in February 2009 when 835,000 jobs were cut.
No, the job losses are not over. Just this week we learned that Airbnb is cutting one quarter of its workforce, Boeing is slashing 16,000 jobs, J. Crew filed for bankruptcy as did Neiman Marcus, Realtor.com cut approximately 15% of its jobs and Uber cut approximately 40% of its corporate workforce. Announcements of these job losses came after the current data presented in this post was compiled.
Across the Atlantic, the Bank of England, Britain’s central bank, just predicted that the economy in Q2 2020 would be nearly -30% smaller than at the end of 2019 as consumer spending, business revenue, investment and trade have all contracted sharply.
The bank projects the full-year economy for 2020 to fall -14%, the worst decline for the British economy since 1706! However, here’s some good news…the bank expects economic activity to “pick up materially in the latter part of 2020 and into 2021.” The bank forecast a +15% jump in growth for 2021.
Thanks to National Public Radio and The New York Times
Also read: Staggering: 30M+ Unemployed in 6 Weeks, Podcast: Why Aren’t Other Real Estate ‘Gurus’, ‘Coaches’ Telling You This Truth?, Podcast: What The Top Agents Are Doing NOW | Updated Info, Agent Bailouts Programs
