We may have lost 21 years of job growth: YahooFinance's rickjnewman
The jobs report for March was terrible, as expected. Employers slashed 701,000 jobs, the worst wipeout since March 2009—the depth of the Great Recession. But this is going to get way worse, with job losses for April likely to be 10 or 20 times the awful March figure.
If that forecast turns out to be correct, total employment in the United States would fall from 151.8 million workers now to around 128 million—the same employment level as in early 1999. Wiping out 21 years of job-market growth is unprecedented in modern times. At the lowest point in the 2007-2009 Great Recession, employment only fell back by 11 years. During the 1982 recession—when unemployment hit a modern record of 10.8% – layoffs pushed employment back by only four years.
The crucial questions in the current recession are how quickly states can contain the virus, allowing businesses to reopen, and how quickly the unemployed can get back to work. It’s a race against time, since a business that might be able to last 2 months with little or no cash flow might not make it to 4 or 6 months. And economic damage will compound every week businesses stay closed and workers stay home.
We’re nowhere near that point yet. Abbott Labs and four other firms are now producing the kind of rapid test that will help to start containing the virus. But the United States is behind the curve, with only abut 1.3 million tests conducted so far. It will take months for test production to ramp up, meanwhile. And the University of Washington’s forecasting model doesn’t see death and infections flattening out until around June 1.
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