With Senator Maher’s warning in mind that South Dakota’s labor data undershoot the full scope of unemployment, let’s look at today’s April employment report for the entire country.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, based on its April 12–18 survey data, 20.5 million Americans lost their jobs last month, raising our unemployment rate to 14.7% and the number of unemployed persons to 23.1 million. In February 2020, unemployment was 3.5%, with 5.8 million people out of work.
Those numbers don’t line up perfectly, because the labor force participation rate—people working plus those looking to work—dropped by 2.5 percentage points to 60.2%, representing 6.4 million people removing themselves from the available workforce. If those 6.4 million had stayed in the civilian labor force, all looking for work, unemployment would have been above 18%.
The only people who have seen higher unemployment had to be alive and reading the papers during the Great Depression:
51.3% of the American population has a job, down 8.7 percentage points since March and the lowest percentage since the government began calculating that figure in 1948.
Job losses by sector (top-level categories are BOLD & ALL CAPS; subcategories are normal font):
| Sector | Jobs Lost # |
| LEISURE & HOSPITALITY | 7,700,000 |
| Food services and drinking places | 5,500,000 |
| Arts, entertainment, recreation | 1,300,000 |
| Accommodations | 839,000 |
| HEALTH & EDUCATION | 2,500,000 |
| Dentists offices | 503,000 |
| Doctors offices | 243,000 |
| Other healthcare practitioners | 205,000 |
| Child day care | 336,000 |
| Individual & family services | 241,000 |
| Private education | 457,000 |
| PROFESSIONAL & BUSINESS SERVICES | 2,100,000 |
| Temporary help services | 842,000 |
| Services to buildings & dwellings | 259,000 |
| RETAIL TRADE | 2,100,000 |
| Clothing & accessories stores | 740,000 |
| Motor vehicle & parts dealers | 345,000 |
| Misc. store retailiers | 264,000 |
| Furniture & home furnishings stores | 209,000 |
| Warehouse clubs & supercenters | added 93,000! |
| MANUFACTURING | 1,300,000 |
| Motor vehicle & parts mfg | 382,000 |
| Fabricated metal products | 109,000 |
| OTHER SERVICES | 1,300,000 |
| Personal & laundry services | 797,000 |
| GOVERNMENT | 980,000 |
| Local gov’t (including school closures) | 801,000 |
| State gov’t education | 176,000 |
| CONSTRUCTION | 975,000 |
| TRANSPORTATION & WAREHOUSING | 584,000 |
| WHOLESALE TRADE | 363,000 |
| FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES | 262,000 |
| INFORMATION | 254,000 |
| MINING | 46,000 |
One out of seven able and willing American workers can’t land a job right now. That’s an economy in the tank.
I’m not surprised by the labor force participation rate decline. I expect that is partly older workers finally deciding they were getting out of the rat race and partly one parent deciding to stay home with the kids for a while, given day care and schools are closed. What will be more disheartening to many folks is how slowly the climb out of this is going to go. Since Trump is jumping the gun, it’s going to be very bumpy. If you look at the graph, job cuts usually happen very quickly in downturns, but job creation drags out over a longer period of time. In the case of the financial crisis, it took 10+ years. With a fool like Trump leading from behind as he leads us back into more COVID cases, jobs aren’t going to tick up very far very fast.
Let’s see if the Governor can balance the budget without federal money since we are to conservative.Wait when capitolism fails it needs socialism Bail out to survive. Show me Gov that your a conservative and will not take fed money.
drumpf says all these lost jobs will return in 2021. He did not say only if he is re-elected, but I assume only he can fix the problems only he created only if he gets another chance to really screw stuff up.
According to drumpf, Michael Flynn’s legal troubles are more troubling than losing 30 million jobs.