Taken together, 21.4 million jobs were destroyed in March and April, nearly equal to the 23 million positions created in the economy's long expansion from February 2010 to February 2020. The number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job nearly doubled to 9.9 million. But 57-year-old Sandra Mahesh, who recently lost her job in Maryland and had her unemployment benefits cut off, is not hopeful. "In April, the job losses were disproportionately concentrated in relatively low-wage sectors like leisure and recreation," Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics said in an analysis. Job losses at the bottom of the wage scale account for one third of the total decline, the authors found.

Source: Dhaka Tribune May 08, 2020 16:18 UTC