An Unemployment Crisis after the Onset of COVID-19

Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau and Robert Valletta

FRBSF Economic Letter, 2020, vol. 2020, issue 12, 5

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the U.S. labor market, with massive job losses and a spike in unemployment to its highest level since the Great Depression. How long unemployment will remain at crisis levels is highly uncertain and will depend on the speed and success of coronavirus containment measures. Historical patterns of monthly flows in and out of unemployment, adjusted for unique aspects of the coronavirus economy, can help in assessing potential paths of unemployment. Unless hiring rises to unprecedented levels, unemployment could remain severely elevated well into next year.

Keywords: labor; pandemic; COVID-19; unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2020-12.pdf Full text - article PDF (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedfel:88045

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in FRBSF Economic Letter from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library ().