US unemployment rate expected to stay above pre-pandemic level till 2030

Washington DC: The US unemployment rate is expected to stay above the pre-pandemic level through the end of 2030, The Washington Post reported citing a 10-year economic report released on Thursday by Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The CBO has predicted that the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2030 will be 4.4 percent down from 7.6 percent at the end of 2021.

The current level of unemployment stands at 11.1 percent. Before the spread of the coronavirus pandemic shut down vast swaths of the US economy, unemployment had reached a 50-year low, coming in at 3.5 percent in February. The unemployment rate is expected to peak at over 14 percent in the third quarter of this year, the report said.

 The new projection shows the long-term impact that economists say the pandemic will have on the US economy, the largest in the world. Severe disruption to production and hiring in March and April has had a jarring impact on the United States.

But there is plenty that’s still unknown. Thursday’s projections were “subject to an unusually high degree of uncertainty,” the report said, including “incomplete knowledge about how the pandemic will unfold (and) how effective monetary and fiscal policy will be.”

On Wednesday, the country reported 52,789 new coronavirus cases, marking the largest single-day total since the start of the pandemic.

“The severity and duration of the pandemic will be affected by how various mitigation measures reduce the spread of the virus and by when vaccines and additional treatments become available,” the report said.

“Further uncertainty surrounds the effects of the pandemic and social distancing on economic activity and on the pace of economic recovery,” it added.

Source: ANI