US won’t close in 2nd wave; jobless hits 39M
The coronavirus has sickened over 1.5 million Americans and caused over 90,000 domestic deaths. The death toll is expected to reach 100,000 by the beginning of June, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In related development, the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits in the two months since the coronavirus took hold in the US had swelled to nearly 39 million, the government reported on Thursday, even as states from coast to coast gradually reopen their economies and let people go back to work.
More than 2.4 million people filed for unemployment last week in the latest wave of layoffs from the business shutdowns that had brought the economy to its knees, the Labor department said.
That brings the running total to a staggering 38.6 million, a jobmarket collapse unprecedented in its speed.
The number of weekly applications has slowed for seven straight weeks. Yet the figures remain breathtakingly high — 10 times higher than normal before the crisis struck.
It shows that even though all states have begun reopening over the past three weeks, employment has yet to snap back and the outbreak is still damaging businesses and destroying jobs.
“While the steady decline in claims is good news, the labor market is still in terrible shape,” said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said over the weekend that US unemployment could peak in May or June at 20 percent to 25 percent, a level last seen during the depths of the Great Depression almost 90 years ago. Unemployment in April stood at 14.7 percent, a figure also unmatched since the 1930s.
Over 5 million people worldwide have been confirmed infected by the virus and more than 330,000 deaths have been recorded, including over 94,000 in the US and around 165,000 in Europe, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University and based on government data. Experts believe the true toll is significantly higher.