US employers cut 701,000 jobs in March, unemployment rate jumps to 4.4%

WASHINGTON (SBG) - It's the first Friday of the month, and you know what that means, the release by the federal government of the latest jobs figures.

The news was far from good and, in the near term, far from the worst news, we are going to get.

The DOW fell by roughly 300 points in early trading Friday, as new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics showed the early, and already devastating, the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the American workforce.

"Even early in the month, businesses stopped hiring. But people were still probably quitting their jobs, thinking that the environment was still healthy enough that they could find other employment. So, there was a net decline in employment," said Chief U.S. Economist with IHS Markit, Joel Prakken.

Seven hundred one thousand jobs were lost in March. The worst showing since the Great Recession of 2009, as the nation's unemployment rate, rose almost a full percentage point from a 50-year low of 3.5% to 4.4%.

But a more timely indication of the carnage created by the coronavirus was Thursday's U.S. Labor Department release showing that, in the week that ended March 28th.

Americans filed over 6.6 million initial jobless claims.

That marked an increase of more than 3.3 million from the revised figures for the preceding week, meaning that in the last two weeks of March, nearly 10-million people filed for unemployment.

In normal times, small businesses create 65% of all new jobs in the U.S.

Now, a survey conducted last week by the "U.S. Chamber of Commerce" and MetLife finds roughly one-quarter of the owners of small businesses reporting they are within two months of closing down permanently, but there was one bright spot.

"One in four also tell us they still expect to add new employees, to hire new workers, in the coming year," said Executive Vice President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Neil Bradley. "Those figures tell us that small businesses understand that this is a moment in time, and that we will get back to normal at some point."

Indeed, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey, almost half of small-business owners believe the economy will return to normal within six months to a year. But the next month or two, economists warned, could see a national unemployment rate of 15%.