By Noreen Burke
Investing.com - The U.S. private sector shed 20.23 million jobs in March, according to a report by payrolls processor ADP, as measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic continued to devastate the country's economy.
Analysts polled by Investing.com had expected the private sector to have shed over 20 million jobs in April due to statewide lockdown measures.
March’s figure was revised to show job losses of 149,000 from the decline of 27,000 that was initially reported.
“Job losses of this scale 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,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, co-head of the ADP Research Institute.
“Additionally, it is important to note that the report is based on the total number of payroll records for employees who were active on a company’s payroll through the 12th of the month. This is the same time period the Bureau of Labor and Statistics uses for their survey.”
The ADP numbers come ahead of the Labor Department's nonfarm payrolls report for April on Friday, which includes both public and private-sector employment. That report is forecast to show the unemployment rate rose to 16% last month and that more than 20 million jobs were lost.
That would easily surpass the post-World War Two record unemployment rate of 10.8% reached in November 1982.
But economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago are estimating that the true rate of unemployment could be between 25.1% and 34.6%.
Ahead of that, Thursday’s jobless claims report is expected to show another surge of new claims for unemployment benefits.
All told, 26.453 million people have filed claims for jobless benefits since March 21, representing 16.2% of the labor force. The economy created 22 million jobs during the employment boom which started in September 2010 and abruptly ended in February this year.
--Reuters contributed to this report