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The closure of factories, stores and restaurants in April in the United States generated the greatest loss of jobs in the country’s history, with 20.5 million jobs destroyed in a month, a devastating figure that shows the depth of the damage caused by the covid-19 pandemic in the world’s largest economy.
Unemployment went from 4.4 percent in March to 14.7 percent in April, data that in an election year complicate the possibilities of US President Donald Trump, ahead of the November elections, where he will seek reelection.
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“Employment fell in practically all the main industrial sectors, with a more pronounced drop in the leisure and hospitality sectors,” said the Labor Department.
April data shows the impact on employment of a month in which much of the country was confined to try to stop a virus for which there is no vaccine and that has left the US. USA the largest number of registered deaths in the world: more than 75,000.
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Figures released by the Labor Department confirmed the debacle illustrated by weekly reports of jobless claims, showing that 33.5 million people have lost their jobs in the country since mid-March. The president tried to lower the profile of the bad news and said that these data “are not surprising.” The data “was completely expected. They are not surprising. Everybody knows”Trump declared to the conservative Fox News network.
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Donald Trump, President of the United States, stated that this was an expected figure in the face of the coronavirus crisis.
“Even the Democrats do not blame me for this,” said the president, whose management began the year with unemployment at record lows of 3.5 percent.
The number of unemployed people thus went from 15.9 million to 23.1 million, and the number of people who have a part-time job due to the economic situation doubled and reaches 10.9 million.
This destruction of jobs at a record rate joins a list of indicators that make up the recessionary scenario: weak data on household consumption, meager investment and trade figures, and the most important, GDP in the first quarter in the US USA It registered a contraction of 4.8 percent in the annual projection. For comparison, in the two years of the global financial crisis that started in 2008, the US economy lost 8.6 million jobs.
During the recovery period between February 2010 and February 2020, some 23 million jobs were created.
“The American economy suffered the most traumatic job loss in its history in April, with a drop in payrolls of 20.5 million which is more than half of what was lost in two years during the financial crisis (of the last decade) ”, illustrated the consultancy Oxford Economics.
After the sharp contraction in GDP in the first quarter, Trump and his economic team are confident that once the virus is brought under control, companies can reopen and recover lost jobs.
“This country cannot remain closed and locked for years,” Trump said Thursday.
But weekly jobless claims figures show that jobs continue to be lost and the unemployment rate could rise further.
Although Congress agreed to an aid and stimulus package to curb the nearly three trillion dollar job destruction and the Federal Reserve also joined injecting liquidity, there are growing fears that forced companies to close due to the coronavirus, they cannot reopen.
AFP
