The St. Louis district of the Federal Reserve is predicting the worst of the economic damage from the coronavirus outbreak will result in a higher unemployment rate than at the worst point in the Depression.
Economists at the Fed’s St. Louis district said in a recent analysis that the US will lose 47 million jobs, resulting in an unemployment rate of 32.1%, a considerable increase from the 24.9% unemployment rate during the worst point of the Great Depression.
The projections also go beyond the 30% unemployment rate originally predicted by St. Louis Fed chair James Bullard.
“These are very large numbers by historical standards, but this is a rather unique shock that is unlike any other experienced by the U.S. economy in the last 100 years,” St. Louis Fed economist Miguel Faria-e-Castro, who wrote the most recent estimates, remarked on the findings.
On Thursday, the US Department of Labor said a record-shattering 3.3 million people applied for unemployment benefits within a single week.
That number is expected to be even higher than what was reported due to multiple state unemployment agencies being overwhelmed by the number of individuals applying for unemployment and not being able to process them all.