Duquesne University Chair Of Economics and Finance Paints Bleak Picture About Unemployment, Future Of Economy
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Today the United States Department of Labor says more than 40 million Americans have filed for first time unemployment benefits during the pandemic and expects the unemployment rate could pass 20% for the first time since the Great Depression.
The states department labor and industry says more than 2 million Pennsylvanians have filed for unemployment since March. They said at the height of the Great Recession there were about 960,000 new claims for all of 2010. They passed 1 million in about 3 weeks in the current crisis.
"We remember there are real people at the end of the process. People that need us," PA Department of Labor and Industry Secretary Jerry Oleksiak soar over a town hall phone call on Thursday.
"This recession is unlike any recession we have seen in that the cause of it is a health crisis," Duquesne University Chair of Economics and Finance Dr. Risa Kumazawa said.
According to her, we are seeing jobless claims 5-6 times higher on a weekly basis than the Great Recession about a decade ago. She said for the economy to recover, we need to see contact tracing and vaccines before we can truly understand when the unemployment rate could drop.
"It's the health and safety of the workers and if that part hasn't been addressed properly, then we are going to continue to find that jobs will be impacted," Dr. Kumazawa said.
When we start to see recovery, Dr. Kumazawa said it could take years for the unemployment rate to reach where it was before the pandemic.
She believes it would be somewhere between the one-and-a-half years of the Great recession's recovery and almost decade for the Great Depression.
"We don't ever see an economy recover at the same speed back up. It's a slow and arduous process to climb out of a recession," she said.
Dr. Kumazawa believes our attitudes go a long way in helping the economy.
If we become too pessimistic, it will impact consumer confidence.
