Senior Trump economic experts argue that there is a desperate need to restart the economy as soon as possible in order to minimize jobless rates - which they say may be above 20 percent - and to guarantee that the pandemic does not result in "permanent economic damage."
However, their opinions come as public health officials warn that restarting non-essential businesses will definitely lead to more Covid-19 cases.
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the US lost 20.5 million jobs in April. This puts the jobless rate in the US at 14.7 per cent, a figure worse than any since the 1930s on record.
United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Sunday that the unprecedented U.S. jobless rate announced by the government in the midst of coronavirus lockdowns could get even worse.
The reported figures may get "worse before they get better," Mnuchin told Fox News Sunday program. In April, the jobless figures increased to 14.7 per cent, the Labor Department said. That broke the 10.8 per cent record of the post-World War II hit in November 1982.
Mnuchin suggested that the White House was considering further fiscal steps to mitigate the pandemic economic distress. Still, Mnuchin said the federal government didn't want to bail out states that had been run "poorly."
Mnuchin admitted Sunday that in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. unemployment rate could have already hit 25 percent as the Trump administration seeks to restart the economy.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the actual jobless figure, which includes people who are not looking for jobs or underemployed, is now 22.8 percent.
Mnuchin said that the jobless rate could be much higher, standing at a quarter, equivalent to the Great Depression, when pressed on the subject by Fox News' Chris Wallace, pointing out that April's data on unemployment stopped in the middle of the month.
Economic advisor to the White House, Kevin Hassett, told CBS "Face The Nation" in an interview Sunday that the US unemployment rate could rise to "north" by 20 percent due to the coronavirus pandemic that caused companies across the country to shut down.
"The truth is, right now, we are burning up initial unemployment insurance claims at a rate of about 3 million a week going through the rest of the month," he said.
US President Donald Trump and some Republican governors have been anxious about restarting the country's economy, bucking some state guidelines for doing so that Trump himself disclosed last month.
