Not only the United States has outnumbered China in reporting corona positive cases, the country has also recorded a new high of unemployed people as COVID-19 fallout intensifies across the world.
While health care structures of most developed nations have been exhausted, and the world is moving towards a global lockdown which will have serious economic, social and psychological implications, the most immediate issues faced by individuals is their job security and how the governments are going to rectify the damages caused by massive unemployment.
The outbreak is feared to claim a death toll close to 1.8 million in 2020. The lockdown has pushed about 3 billion people into the confine of their homes where they are unable to contribute to the national economy like before.
More than 530,000 people are sick globally due to the infection and one sixth of them belong to the US owing to which the country edged over Italy as the worst coronavirus-hit population. At the moment, 40 per cent American citizens are locked down.
So far all the US government could do is urge them to stay home and away from each other and not panic, just like any developing nation’s leader.
The pandemic has already become catastrophic for the global economy.
In the United States, the world’s largest economy, the Labor Department reported that 3.3 million people applied for unemployment benefits last week – by far the highest number ever recorded. Unemployment has swept across sectors from food services to retail to transportation, as nearly half of the country has closed to non-essential businesses.
“It is staggering. We are only seeing the initial numbers; they will get worse, unfortunately,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters, estimating that half a million people in the city would lose work.
But stock markets continued to climb Friday, with Asian bourses in the green after a third straight day of rises on Wall Street.
The bill goes before the House of Representatives on Friday.
