One For The History Books: 14.7% Unemployment, 20.5 Million Jobs Wiped Away

One For The History Books: 14.7% Unemployment, 20.5 Million Jobs Wiped Away

 

May 8, 2020 • U.S. employers shed a record number of jobs in April, as the unemployment rate climbed to the highest since the Great Depression. The coronavirus crisis has locked down much of the economy.

The Labor Department delivered a historically bad employment report Friday, showing 20.5 million jobs lost last month as the nation locked down against the coronavirus. The jobless rate soared to 14.7% — the highest level since the Great Depression.

The highest monthly job loss before this was 2 million in 1945, as the nation began to demobilize after World War II. The worst monthly job loss during the Great Recession was 800,000 in March 2009.