The United States' economy lost a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April, pushing the unemployment rate to 14.7% according to data released by the country's Bureau of Labor Statistics.?
April¡¯s jobs report is the first of the monthly releases to show the extent of the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus?pandemic. In February, the unemployment rate was at a?historic low of 3.5%.??
The coronavirus lockdown wiped out nearly all the positions created in the prior decade in the world¡¯s largest economy, the US Labor Department reported on Friday.
The unprecedented collapse drove the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent - well beyond the peak hit in late 2009 during the global financial crisis -from 4.4 percent in March.
And job losses in March were worse than initially reported, falling 870,000 even though the business closures mostly happened in the second half of the month.
Employment fell sharply in all major industry sectors, with particularly heavy job losses in leisure and hospitality, the first sector hit and the one bearing the brunt of the impact of the lockdowns.
However, the Labor Department noted that the some workers were misclassified in the report as employed when they should have been counted as laid off. Had they been listed properly, the unemployment rate would have been nearly five percentage points higher.