Huge rise in US unemployment

A glimpse of the financial carnage the coronavirus pandemic has generated has been provided by recent economic information from the US and Europe.

New US figures revealed the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits jumped past 30 million, deepening the crisis which hasn’t been seen since the 1930s.

The figures also increase pressure on US leaders to lift lockdowns which have seen factory and businesses work grinds to a complete stop in some cases.

It is roughly one in six US employees or everybody living in New York, Chicago and Texas combined.

Economists are forecasting May could be worse and unemployment could rise to 20 per cent or one in five individuals.

Meanwhile, in Europe, dire financial statistics from the Euro area economy that covers 19 countries which use the money revealed it shrank by 3.8 per cent in the first quarter of this year.

The collapse was the largest since 1995 when eurozone figures started.