The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Employment Situation Summary today, and the results are what we expected (for the month of April).
- Number of unemployed persons rose by 15.9 million to 23.1 million in April
- Unemployment rate rose to 14.7% (that’s a jump of 10.3 percentage points)
- Largest over-the-month increase in the history of the survey (dating back to 1948)
- Affected all major industry sectors, with leisure and hospitality hit particularly hard with a 47% decline
The national jobs report shows a significant impact from the COVID-19 crisis. The jobs report for the states will be released on May 22nd and that is when we will see the direct impact on Nebraska.
We have a sense of what the impact will likely be from our Economic Impact report by Dr. Ernie Goss and Scott Strain showing that 96,147 jobs lost in Nebraska resulted in $834.5 million in total economic impact. Unfortunately, this national jobs picture supports what we anticipate, and that is a bigger economic blow to Nebraska’s economy in the month of April.