Another 5.2M people file for unemployment, U.S. jobless claims top 20M
The coronavirus pandemic has sent shockwaves through the global economy after another 5.24 million people were laid off. Yahoo Finance’s Jessica Smith breaks down the latest developments on jobless claims.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: Right now, though, we're going to go to Jessica Smith in Washington for more details on the news from there today, Jess? Jess, you just need to un-mute yourself, sorry. Happens to us all.
JESSICA SMITH: Sorry about that, you'd think I'd have this down by now. But first, we want to hit those jobless claims one more time. 5.2 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week. And while that is a devastating number, it is lower than what economists had expected. They were looking for 5.5 million. And in the last four weeks, the number of unemployment claims filed reached 22 million. So in the past month, the coronavirus has effectively wiped out the job gains over the past decade.
Now, President Trump is eager to get people back to work, to get business going again, and we do expect him to issue new guidelines today about reopening the economy. The guidelines would be for US governors, as they try to get their states ready to open back up. In addition to the roughly 200 industry leaders that he is consulting, or that the White House says is advising the president, the president has also set up a task force of lawmakers, a congressional task force, focused on reopening the economy.
The president did speak to those lawmakers on two conference calls this morning, and we do expect the president to also talk to governors today via teleconference at 3:00 PM. That is closed to the press at the moment, but that could always change. We expect him to give governors an idea of what this guidance is going to look like, these new reopening guidelines, and then we could learn more details about what those guidelines actually are during the press briefing at 5:00 this evening, Julie.
JULIE HYMAN: Jess, thank you. Appreciate it.