Unemployment Climbs By 0.9% (& That's An Undercount)

The Labor Department has released it statistics for the month of March. They say the U.S. economy lost 701,000 jobs during the month, and now has 7,140,000 unemployed workers (compared to 5,787,000 for February). That is a huge undercount. That's because the figures for a month are figured through surveys done in the first 2 or 3 weeks of the month -- and that didn't detect the nearly 10 million who applied for unemployment in the last two weeks.

A jump of 0.9% to 4.4% unemployment (the official statistic for March) is a huge jump, but it's going to look like a tiny jump when the figures for April (and May) are released. I would expect those figures to be in double digits. This is going to get ugly. Trump says the economy will bounce back strongly once the virus is contained. Don't bet on that. The Congressional Budget Office is currently predicting the unemployment rate will be about 9% at the end of 2021!

Here are the official statistics for March:

SIZE OF THE CIVILIAN WORK FORCE:

162,913,000

OFFICIAL NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:

7,140,000

OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:

4.4%

DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT:

Adult men...............4.0%
Adult women...............4.0%
Teenagers (16-19)...............14.3%
Whites...............4.0%
Blacks...............6.7%
Asians...............4.1%
Hispanics...............6.0%
Less than HS diploma...............6.8%
HS graduate...............4.4%
Some college...............3.7%
Bachelor's deg. or more...............2.5%