14.7% Unemployed

The United States’ Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) announced that the unemployment rate in the USA rose to 14.7% in April from 4.4%.

They noted,

In April, the unemployment rate increased by 10.3 percentage points to 14.7 percent. This is the highest rate and the largest over-the-month increase in the history of the series (seasonally adjusted data are available back to January 1948). The number of unemployed persons rose by 15.9 million to 23.1 million in April. The sharp increases in these measures reflect the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and efforts to contain it. (See table A-1. For more information about how the household survey and its measures were affected by the coronavirus pandemic, see the box at the end of the news release.)”[1]

The BLS also indicates at the end of the statement that the unemployment rate could be closer to 20%.

“If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to ‘other reasons’ (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical April) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been almost 5 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis).”

An unemployment rate of 20% is almost as bad as the worst recorded unemployment rate of 24% in 1933 during the Great Depression.[2]

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/laus.pdf

[2] https://www.thebalance.com/unemployment-rate-by-year-3305506