Washington (AFP)

The US economy has never destroyed so many jobs in such a short time, and the Covid-19 crisis brought the unemployment rate in two months from its lowest level in 50 years to a level worthy of the 1930s crisis.

20.5 million jobs were destroyed in April, a record level in such a short time.

In comparison, 8.6 million jobs had been destroyed during the two years of the global financial crisis just over 10 years ago.

As for the unemployment rate, which proudly stood at 3.5% in February, it jumped to 14.7%, its highest level since June 1940.

At the heart of the Great Recession of 2009, the unemployment rate was 10.1%.

These staggering figures, however, are worse than expected, since analysts expected 16 to 20% unemployment, and 28 million jobs lost.

"Employment has fallen sharply in all the main sectors, with particularly significant job losses in leisure and hospitality," said the Labor Department in a statement.

The number of unemployed people increased from 15.9 million to 23.1 million.

The number of people who work part-time for economic reasons has almost doubled to 10.9 million.

These figures are "not surprising" and were "expected", responded President Donald Trump on Fox News.

In the campaign for a second term in the White House, the Republican had made the good health of the American economy one of his main campaign arguments.

- 33.5 million -

April is the first month to reflect the extent of the Covid-19 crisis on the world's largest economy. The brutal shutdown of the economy from mid-March caused 33.5 million people to lose their jobs.

But last month, the unemployment rate was only 4.4%, because it is the situation on the 12th day of each month that is taken into account for the calculation, that is to say before the implementation of the massive confinement.

Containment measures in view of the spread of the new coronavirus were gradually extended in the country during the second half of March.

Restaurants, cafes, shops, had to close their doors, as did schools. The housekeepers and babysitters were thanked. Taxis and other drivers suddenly had no more passengers to carry.

It has been seven weeks since the new unemployed registered in the millions, against 200,000 to 250,000 new weekly registrations before the crisis.

They were again more than 3 million, between April 26 and May 2, to have pointed to unemployment for the first time, according to figures released Thursday by the Labor Department. The peak was reached at the end of March, with 6.8 million new unemployed in one week.

Since then, the decline has been very slow.

In total, nearly 33.5 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits.

- Record of compensated unemployed -

The Trump administration and Congress have released a total of $ 669 billion in loans to small and medium businesses to help pay the wages of their employees.

Unemployment rights have also been temporarily extended to people who previously could not claim them, such as the self-employed.

And the country is now compensating more unemployed people than ever, 22.6 million people in the last week of April, when they were around 1.7 million before the pandemic.

The United States' gross domestic product (GDP) fell 4.8% in the first quarter, the largest drop since the fourth quarter of 2008, when the United States plunged into the economic crisis.

The Covid-19 has killed more than 75,000 people in the United States, and affected 1.2 million people, according to the Johns Hopkins University count.

© 2020 AFP