Jobless

Millions of Americans likely claimed for unemployment benefits last week, which would make the total filings for more than 20 million over the past month as the coronavirus outbreak continued to weigh on the U.S. economy. The U.S. Labor Department will be releasing the unemployment data today around 19:30 local time in Thailand (GMT+7). Economists consensus showed that the jobless claim on the week ended April 11 will be 5.35 million. The highest jobless forecast was 8 million and the lowest was 2 million. Last week, the actual jobless claims was 6.6 million, beating the consensus of economists which forecasted at 5.46 million. The total number of unemployment from last week was around 16 million, counting from the claim ended March 21, when the U.S. businesses started to paralyze from the virus outbreak. Another 5 million claims from last week will push the number of people losing jobs during the crisis to more than 20 million in just over a month. Although the forecast pointed to a decline in jobless claims for the second week, economists were divided on whether the decelerate in claims indicated that the peak was 6.86 million in the week ended March 28, or mountain of papers were stacking at the state employment offices as officers were unable to process all the filings for the week in time of the report. “We expect that claims will remain very elevated in coming weeks as states struggle to clear backlogs and more companies lay off workers in response to the shutdown,” said Joseph Briggs, an economist at Goldman Sachs. “Including this week, we currently project an additional 20 million in initial jobless claims through the end of May, after which we expect new claims to fall to levels consistent with prior recessions.” Yesterday, the U.S. Commerce Department published the data which showed a drop of retail sales stateside in March of a record 8.7% which is the largest one-month drop since the department began tracking in 1992. Earlier, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasted 2020 global GDP to contract 3%, contrasted to its early outlook of 3.3% growth in January. IMF stated that the world could see the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. In the statement published by IMF, the U.S. economy was projected to decline this year by 5.9%, the Euro area by 7.5%, Thailand to contract by 6.7%, but China would grow 1.2%.