April’s Labor Market Report to Reveal Insights

As we prepare to digest insights from the Labor Department’s release of April’s first half labor report, we may well see the most shocking monthly reports in our modern record. Business Insider talked to labor market professionals and economists to gain their perspective.

Takeaways:

• “Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect the US economy lost 21 million jobs in April and that the unemployment rate to spiked to 16%, the highest on record dating back to 1948.”
• “A number of economic indicators have also shown just how quickly the economy has deteriorated amid the coronavirus pandemic, but labor market data has been particularly stark — nearly 34 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance in just seven weeks, according to the latest data released Thursday.”
• “Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed [says,] ‘Even if the unemployment rate hits levels not seen in decades, it won’t fully capture the harm done.'”

This informative article speaks about how economists interpret the possible distortion of reported unemployment figures released to date. These economists offer insight about, for example, the misleading qualifiers of unemployment, inaccurate seld-reporting, and how we are failing to quantify those that are underemployed compared to the beginning of the year.

Take a look at the article, Economists forecast 16% unemployment and a record 21 million payroll cuts for April jobs report.