CNBC: 4.3m people have left U.S. labor force since start of pandemic

Collecting unemployment forms at a drive through collection point outside John F. Kennedy Library in Hialeah, Florida, U.S., April 8, 2020. /CFP

Official data showed that a total of 4.3 million have left the labor force in the United States since the start of the pandemic, according to a CNBC report on Monday, with roughly 406,000 people leaving the labor force between December and January.

It's viewed as bad news by labor experts for both families and the whole economy, which will likely be impeded by lower household income and worker output, according to CNBC, noting that "the dynamic makes the U.S. unemployment rate appear artificially low due to how federal officials quantify the jobless metric."

"It's bad for individuals, it's bad for human suffering, harms the overall economy and drags this [downturn] out even more," said Heidi Shierholz to CNBC, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, and former chief economist at the Labor Department.

Also, CNBC said that the true unemployment rate in January was likely 8.3 percent, compared with the 6.3 percent rate officially reported, according to an analysis by Jason Furman, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration, and Wilson Powell III, a research associate at the Harvard Kennedy School.

"I think the unemployment rate right now is understating some of the damage we're seeing in the labor market," said Nick Bunker, an economist at job site Indeed, according to CNBC.

Meanwhile, economists, according to CNBC, believed that the pandemic has aggravated the trend, which typically occurs during recessions.

"Due to the nature of this recession, the phenomenon is much more dramatic than in others, including the Great Recession," Shierholz stressed.