US lost 20.2 million private sector jobs, 81 per cent global workforce impacted

In a new data analysis, more than 20.2 million jobs were slashed by the businesses in the United States as the economic turmoil was wrought by the global coronavirus pandemic shutting offices, factories, schools, construction sites, and stores, as per reports. This led to the collapse of the employed sector in the “recession of historic proportions” that caused tragic depth and scale of job losses in April as per the payroll company ADP. 

Chief economist at Moody's Analytics, Mark Zandi, was quoted as saying that the job losses due to the health crisis that left no economy in the world unscathed will continue through to May.  He added that the recovery hiring, however, will shoot up in the months to follow.

Despite the dip in employment, US stocks pushed higher at the open, with the Dow rising by 0.4 per cent amid the widespread business operations shutdowns as a containment effort to the COVID-19 outbreak. With a startling 6.6 million people that sought the unemployment stimulus benefit only in the past week, the United States reached a grim landmark with the largest and fastest string of job losses in records dating to 1948, US media reported.  

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195 million full-time jobs at risk

According to the United Nations’ labour organization, an equivalent of 195 million full-time jobs could be lost in the second quarter to business shutdowns, which estimates 25 million surges in global unemployment by the 2020 end. Reports suggest the global lockdown has affected approximately 2.7 billion workers — about 81 per cent of the global workforce. 

"Job losses of this scale in US are unprecedented. The total number of job losses for the month of April alone was more than double the total jobs lost during the Great Recession," Ahu Yildirmaz, co-head of the ADP Research Institute, said in a statement, as per a news agency report. 

Losses were widespread, that comprised of small-scale businesses which accounted for more than 6 million lost jobs. Followed by the mid-sized businesses with between 50 and 499 employees that shed more than 5.2 million positions, and finally the large businesses with more than 500 employees which had to drop nearly 9 million jobs due to the pandemic, according to media reports.  

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(With AP Inputs)