A Standard Chartered analysis suggests the real US unemployment rate is more than 25 per cent.
On Friday, US data showed unemployment had surged to 14.7 per cent, its highest level since the second world war, as the coronavirus pandemic led 20.5m Americans to lose their jobs in April in a painful blow to the world’s largest economy.
But StanChart believes the true figure is much higher. “We think plausible adjustments to the headline unemployment rate push the effective number of unemployed to 42m and the effective unemployment rate to 25.5 per cent,” said Steven Englander, head of North America macro strategy at Standard Chartered in New York.