The US unemployment rate will hit a low in May-June amid the ongoing pandemic and is expected to be north of 20%, US economic adviser Kevin Hassett said in an interview with CBS.
On Friday, US unemployment data for April showed that the nation had set a new record and jumped to 14.7% from 4.4% reported in March, while the number of jobs in non-agricultural sectors of the economy fell by a record 20.5 million.
Separately, the Labour Department said on Thursday that it received 33 million filings for first-time unemployment benefits by Americans over the past seven weeks, indicating more job losses to come.
The Commerce Department said last week that the consumer-driven US economy shrank 4.8 percent in the first three months of 2020, hit by a shuttering of non-essential businesses from March in most of the country's 50 states in efforts to curb the impact of the COVID-19.
The United States currently counts 1,245,775 confirmed cases of infection with 75,364 fatalities from COVID-19, according to the World Health Organisation.
