Trump Hails Worst Single-Month Job Losses Since 1939 As Step Toward Greatest American Comeback In History

WASHINGTON. The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday reported that the U.S. economy lost 20.5 million jobs in April and that the unemployment rate had risen to 14.7 percent, marking the worst single-month decline since the federal government began tracking the figure in its current form and the highest jobless rate since the Great Depression.

President Trump, in a Fox Business interview that morning, characterized the figures as expected and assured viewers that the 20.5 million Americans who had lost their jobs would, in his words, "all be back, and they'll be back very soon." The President added that the report, taken in full context, was "no surprise" and in some respects "actually a great jobs report."

The figures, which exceeded the worst single-month decline of the Hoover administration, were attributed by economists to a coronavirus pandemic the President had spent the prior winter forecasting would "disappear, one day, like a miracle." Roughly one in seven American workers found themselves furloughed or terminated within a thirty-day window.

Asked whether the administration intended to advance any new employment policy in response to the figures, White House officials pointed reporters to the stock market, which had begun to recover after the Federal Reserve announced unprecedented emergency intervention. "The President has been very focused on the markets," one senior administration official told reporters, declining to elaborate on whether the markets had been focused on the 20.5 million newly unemployed Americans.

In a Rose Garden appearance later that afternoon, the President characterized the unfolding recovery as already underway and shortly to be the best recovery any nation had ever experienced. He attributed the historic job losses primarily to "the China virus," a phrase he had been using with growing frequency in the weeks since the federal pandemic response had come under sustained scrutiny.

At press time, the President was assuring reporters that "tremendous" numbers lay just ahead, once the country reopened, which he predicted would happen very, very soon.