Article
June 2021
Unemployment rises in 2020, as the country battles the COVID-19 pandemic
Total civilian employment fell by 8.8 million over the year, as the COVID-19 pandemic brought the economic expansion to a sudden halt, taking a tremendous toll on the U.S. labor market. The unemployment rate increased in 2020, surging to 13.0 percent in the second quarter of the year before easing to 6.7 percent in the fourth quarter. Although some people were able to work at home, the numbers of unemployed on temporary layoff, those working part time for economic reasons, and those unemployed for 27 or more weeks increased sharply over the year.
A decade-long economic expansion ended early in 2020, as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it led businesses to suspend operations or close, resulting in a record number of temporary layoffs. The pandemic also prevented many people from looking for work. For the first 2 months of 2020, the economic expansion continued, reaching 128 months, or 42 quarters. This was the longest economic expansion on record before millions of jobs were lost because of the pandemic.
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Total civilian employment, as measured by the Current Population Survey (CPS), fell by 21.0 million from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2020, while the unemployment rate more than tripled, from 3.6 percent to 13.0 percent. This was the highest quarterly average unemployment rate in the history of the CPS.
Employment declined and unemployment rose over the year, as the nation battled the COVID-19 pandemic.
www.bls.gov
This is an example of how trump mishandled the economy during the pandemic. We had the capability to produce what was needed to mitigate COVID by the simply invoking the Defense Production Act. But he never did it.
Biden immediately invoked it upon taking office.