The COVID-19 outbreak has yet again proved fatal to more than people’s health; it has taken a toll on their livelihood too. The unforeseen and sudden lockdowns that were bought into effect because of the deadly virus has put a rather big hole in the pockets of most countries an has proven to be a fatal blow to its economy as well. But for the U.S. government, it is more than a toll; one can say it’s time travel!
One more week and it is back to the Great Recession for the U.S. economy:
Due to the forced closure of all kinds of trades and business running all over the U.S. owing to the pandemic, the number of Americans filing in for the state unemployment benefits has sky-rocketed which has been estimated to amounts as high as 5.245 million by last week alone, the U.S. Labor Department stated on Thursday.
Seema Shah, the chief strategist at Principal Global Investors wrote that ” While today’s jobless numbers are down on last week, they still mean that all the job gains since the financial crisis of the Great Recession have been erased,” she also continued to add on that “concerns for the second half of the year may be underestimated,” and that “What’s more, with many workers, including those in the gig economy, not included in these numbers, labor market pains may have even been worse than the current numbers suggest.” She also went on to say that “Although governments are looking to lift these lockdowns, the re-opening of economies will be slow-paced and gradual, compounding financial strains for businesses and households, suppressing demand and suggesting a slower economic recovery.”
Judging by her statements, one could conclude that the current state in the U.S. is only going to worsen over time, and there would be nothing much that the people can do other than play along.
Cumulating with yet a few more jobless claims reports, the ranks of Americans who have deemed themselves unemployed has reached a total of 22.052 million cases just within four weeks. Four hundred seventeen thousand more similar cases will tally up to the 22.442 million jobs that were added to non-farm payrolls as a countermeasure to the Great Recession back in November 2009. And all of this right within four weeks. If the conditions continue under such circumstances, the U.S. economy will have wiped out nearly all the job gains within the past 11 years right within five weeks. It is only a matter of time till next week’s Thursday when the national claims for this week will be released.
Although all the eager investors and dealers will have to wait till May 8th for the current month’s official look at the U.S. unemployment rate, the reports of the U.S. labor department’s latest non-farm payrolls report has already made it clear that hordes of unemployment cases and layoffs at bars and restaurants and also some of the state governments forcing the closure of the majority of businesses with payrolls plunging to as low as 701,000 in march alone, making the first drop since 2010 and the worst since early 2009 where the unemployment rate jumped nearly a full percentage point, from 3.5% to 4.4%.
With such conditions at hand, it’s tough to determine where it would take everyone and how crippled it would leave them.
