The Coronavirus pandemic has toppled the US labour market is in the worst crisis in decades. And despite the first easing of the requirements in the Federal States, the situation continues to deteriorate.

Washington (Reuters) - The number of unemployed in the United States is rising due to the Corona-crisis. In the week up to 16. May have, according to the U.S. government more than 2.4 million people an initial application for unemployment assistance.

Since the escalation of the Coronavirus pandemic in the United States in March, have now lost more than 38 million people at least temporarily, your Job - as many as never before in such a short period of time. The United States are due to the pandemic in a serious economic crisis.

In the preceding week, there had been close to three million new applications. Analysts had expected less requests, since many of US have begun the Federal States to ease its because of the pandemic, imposed output restrictions. Many shops, factories and Restaurants are allowed to reopen, subject to conditions, which should have a slow positive effect on the labour market. So far, but in view of the continued high number of new proposals is not apparent that the employer brought in those States, their employees, to a large extent back, said the North America-Analyst Paul Ashworth, of the consulting firm Capital Economics.

The initial applications shall apply to unemployment assistance as an indicator for the short-term development of the US labour market. The only from the data of the new applications resulting unemployment rate would be now at 17.2 percent, the government said. In April, the unemployment rate was officially at 14.7 percent. Due to errors in the collection of the data, the competent authority has warned, however, that the rate could already be about 20 percent. That would be the highest value for decades. The may statistics will only be published at the beginning of June. Prior to the escalation of the pandemic, the unemployment rate was still extremely low 3.5 percent.

The U.S. Congress has so far decided with the support of both parties-stimulus packages of around 2.7 trillion US dollars, which corresponds to around ten percent of the annual U.S. economic output. The Democrats controlled the house of representatives now wants to impose another package of around 3 trillion dollars, the Republican-controlled Senate wants to block the package, however.

According to the assessment of Central Bank chief Jerome Powell the Corona has pandemic plunged the U.S. economy into the worst recession since the Second world war. On Tuesday Powell in the US had told the Senate that there is in recent history, not a role model for the "scale and speed" of the current downturn. The pandemic in the USA within just two months, the positive labour market developments in a decade to be undone. Once again, Powell encouraged the Congress to consider further measures to stabilize the economy. The head of the Federal Reserve (Fed) had recently warned that a full recovery of the economy and labour market could drag on until the end of 2021.

In the USA there was data from the University of Johns Hopkins found that up Thursday morning (local time) around 1.55 million known infections with the novel Coronavirus. More than 93,000 people have died thus. The causative agent of Sars-CoV-2 can trigger the lung disease Covid-19.

data of the University of Johns Hopkins to the Corona epidemic, English

press release to current data to 16. May, English