March Jobs Disaster: 701,000 Jobs Lost, Unemployment Rate Soars Most in 45 Years as US Slides into Depression
The comments below are an edited and abridged synopsis of an article by Tyler Durden
While the recent payrolls report was expected to be better than the recent initial claims suggested, it ended up being catastrophic nonetheless: A whopping 701K jobs were lost in the US in March, 7x more than the 100K expected, and just shy of the worst payrolls prints recorded during the financial crisis.
This happened before the worst of the coronavirus hit, suggesting that what comes next will be truly awful.
With revisions, employment gains in January and February combined were 57,000 lower than previously reported.
Private sector jobs dropped by 713K (vs Exp. 163K), with almost all the drop the result of a record collapse in service-providing jobs.
In March, the unemployment rate increased by 0.9 percentage point to 4.4%. This is the largest over-the-month increase in the rate since January 1975, when the increase was also 0.9 percentage point. The number of unemployed persons rose by 1.4 million to 7.1 million in March. The sharp increases in these measures reflect the effects of the coronavirus and efforts to contain it. The participation rate plunged from a 7-year-high to tie the lowest level in 5 years.
Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 11 cents to $28.62. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.1%. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 10 cents to $24.07 in March.
And now we brace for April, when the really ugly number will be revealed and when, according to some, the US economy may lose as many as 10 million jobs.