The U.S. unemployment rate likely shot up to almost 20 percent in May, a new post World War II record, with millions more losing their jobs amid the Covid-19 crisis, Reuters reported. The Labor Department’s closely watched monthly employment report on Friday could bolster economists’ dire predictions that it would take several years to recover from the economic meltdown. Still, May was probably the nadir for the labor market. While layoffs remained very high, they eased considerably in the second half of May as businesses reopened after shuttering in mid-March to slow the spread of Covid-19. Consumer confidence, manufacturing and services industries are also stabilizing, though at low levels, hopeful signs that the worst was over. “The good news is that we probably have hit the bottom,” said Sung Won Sohn, a finance and economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “But the recovery will be painfully slow. It will take years, probably a decade to get back to where we were at the end of last year.”
