(Reuters) – A surge in U.S. job losses last month that’s expected to accelerate and is forecast by some to lift the unemployment rate to more than 30% is a result of measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus that in themselves should set the stage for a faster economic recovery, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said on Friday.
“Whether you put a 30% number to it or a 10% number to it, these are big numbers, over 10 million people filing for unemployment insurance,” Daly said in an interview with CNN, adding that the sobering data are a result of widespread stay-at-home orders that in past pandemics have been effective.
“Those numbers don’t stay big if we do these things well; whatever the number turns out to be on unemployment, it dissipates faster …that’s what we are trying to accomplish, having that be temporary and not be permanent.”
(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Paul Simao)
