To put that into perspective, last year the unemployment rate was about 4%.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...-rate-n1162601
Trump administration officials warned Senate Republicans on Tuesday that the coronavirus outbreak in the United States could cause the unemployment rate to reach 20 percent, according to two sources familiar with the discussion.
The warning came during a closed-door lunch on Capitol Hill in which Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin presented a White House stimulus plan that could cost at least $1 trillion. The prediction was first reported by Bloomberg News. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow also attended the lunch.
As the stock market struggles and the health of the economy is in serious jeopardy, previously reluctant Republicans are becoming much more open to approving an aid bill that large.
That estimated unemployment rate would be double the highest rate from the period around the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009, when it reached 10 percent in October 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Before then, the unemployment rate had not been that high since late 1982 through the first half of 1983 when it peaked at 10.8 percent.
Of course, Americans experienced the worst unemployment during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Estimates say that the unemployment rate hit 25 percent in 1933. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, said that it was difficult to measure unemployment because there was little statistical data on the extent or the nature of joblessness across the country.



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