US reports 1.87 million new unemployment claims, 42 million workers laid off so far

More than 42 million US workers have reportedly been laid off due to the coronavirus pandemic in less than 3 months as over 1.87 million new claims of unemployment benefits were filed within last week, according to a US labour report. This comes after businesses slashed the jobs as the employers were forced to close down due to the coronavirus outbreak that sent the US economy into a deep recession worse since the Great Depression.  

As per a central bank report, an unprecedented 20.5 million Americans lost their jobs in April and the unemployment rate in the US jumped to 14.7 per cent. Further, according to the Federal Reserve survey, one in five American workers lost their jobs in March, including almost 40 per cent of those in lower-income households. however, the data released by the US Labour Department revealed that the number of new claims filed in the week that ended on May 30 was slightly worse than expected, but the overall count was 249,000 less than the week prior.  

A senior analyst at the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank, Jared Bernstein tweeted, “This and other indicators suggest not that the job market is improving but that it's getting bad less quickly,” indicative of overall improvement in the rate of lay-offs that was recorded 2.7 times higher in the last week. Bernstein’s statement comes as the US records the decline in the pace of layoffs for weeks, as some reopened businesses rehired a portion of their laid-off employees., as per the reports.  

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Projection estimated 30 per cent unemployment

Earlier, according to estimates published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St.Louis, the unemployment rate in the US was estimated to hit a shocking 32% in the second quarter, the highest recorded since 1948, as per the reserve bank's calculation. St. Louis Fed economist, Miguel Faria-e-Castro, told the press briefing that the figures were shocking and have never been experienced by the US economy in the past 100 years. According to the US media reports, the latest unemployment rate due to the pandemic is worse than what was predicted by St. Louis Fed President, James Bullard, earlier in March. He had reportedly estimated a 30 per cent rate of unemployment.   

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(Image Credit: AP)