Unemployment rate drops to 13 percent, as the economy began to lose jobs at a slower pace [View all]
Source: Washington Post
The federal unemployment rate declined to 13.3 percent in May from 14.7 percent in April, the Department of Labor said Friday, a sign that economy is recovering more quickly than economists had projected.
The economy gained 2.5 million jobs in May, as many states and counties began to reopen with the slowing of coronavirus cases nationwide.
These figures signal the U.S. economy is beginning to bottom out. Yet the 30 million workers who are still collecting unemployment benefits is a sign of how significantly the labor market has been upended.
“The idea you would see job gains and the unemployment rate falling was not something really that people were expecting,” said Jay Shambaugh, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “But a 13.3 percent unemployment rate is higher than any point in the Great Recession. It represents massive joblessness and economic pain. You need a lot of months of gains around this level to get back to the kind of jobs totals we used to have."
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/05/may-2020-jobs-report/
Original article (note the change from "lost their jobs" to "gained jobs" in the WaPo edit) -
Another 2.5 million workers lost their jobs in May from the economic havoc caused by the coronavirus, a staggering figure that could more than triple the total amount of jobs lost during the 2007 to 2009 recession.
There are hopes that May's unemployment rate is near the nadir of the crisis -- the rocky bottom below which the United States will sink no further. Yet, with some 30 million workers collecting unemployment benefits, the labor market has been upended.
Economists agree that getting back to normal will take longer and be more challenging than recessions of the past. The crisis has touched nearly every part of the economy.
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