The White House has no idea if the historic US job losses in April due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic mark a low point for the country's unemployment, although it is optimistic of a rebound in the second half of the year, Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow said on Friday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th May, 2020) The White House has no idea if the historic US job losses in April due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic mark a low point for the country's unemployment, although it is optimistic of a rebound in the second half of the year, Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow said on Friday.
"Well, I don't know if it's as bad as it gets as I don't think this pandemic contraction has yet fully run," Kudlow told the Fox business network. "I don't think this pandemic contraction has yet fully run its course ... You're really going to transition into a reopening of the economy, so who's to say the numbers will not get worse."
The United States lost a historic 20.5 million jobs in April as the novel coronavirus crisis bumped up the nation's unemployment rate by 10.3 percent to 14.7 percent, the highest ever, the Labor Department said in its monthly employment report on Friday.
The Commerce Department said last week that the consumer-driven US economy shrank 4.8 percent in the first three months of 2020, hit by a shuttering of non-essential businesses from March in most of the country's 50 states in efforts to curb the impact of the COVID-19.
While that first quarter decline was already the sharpest since the Great Recession of 2008-09, both White House and private economists predict that the current quarter between April and June would be worse, saying the now mostly reopened economy wasn't expected to show much recovery until the third quarter.
"These are tough numbers," Kudlow said, referring to the 20.5 million jobs lost in April. "But 3/4 of it is shown to be temporary layoffs ... because this is a temporary virus cycle. This goes on, in my opinion, a few more weeks or a month. It isn't going on forever. We will see very positive numbers in the second half of the year."
Separately, the Labor Department said on Thursday that it received 33 million filings for first-time unemployment benefits by Americans over the past seven weeks, indicating more job losses to come.
