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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the unemployment numbers are probably "going to get worse before they get better," acknowledging that the current jobless rate may have already hit 25 percent, Fox News reported Sunday.
The U.S. economy is going to experience "a very, very bad second quarter," but the nation is focusing on reopening the economy, so a rebound is expected in the third quarter, Mnuchin was quoted as saying in an interview.
"The reported (jobless) numbers are probably going to get worse before they get better," Mnuchin said, noting that this would not be a surprise as the country closed down the economy in a bid to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed that U.S. employers cut a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April, erasing a decade of job gains since the global financial crisis and pushing the unemployment rate to a record 14.7 percent.
The record unemployment figure, however, might not capture the full scale of the COVID-19-induced job crisis, due to the survey's timing and the traditional definition of unemployment, among other things.
About 7 million Americans filed for jobless claims since the BLS's household survey reference period, in this case April 12 through April 18. Millions more might have been laid off or left a job and are not looking for a new one amid the pandemic, and thus might not be defined as unemployed.
Besides, the BLS said if the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to "other reasons," which is over and above the number in a typical April, had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been almost 5 percentage points higher than reported.
Mnuchin warned that the United States could see permanent economic damage if the country does not reopen, while remaining optimistic that situation will improve in the second half of the year.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
