Larry Kudlow on April jobs report: Trump assembled $9T rescue plan, we’ve done the best we can
U.S. loses record 20.5 million jobs in the month of April; White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow weighs in on ‘America’s Newsroom.’
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Director of the United States National Economic Council Larry Kudlow said on Friday that 2021 will be a “fabulous” economic recovery if President Trump’s policies continue.
“Let’s use a free enterprise system, let’s use incentives, let’s reward success; that’s the president’s philosophy and I think that’s going to be his policies,” Kudlow told “America’s Newsroom.” “And that’s why the second half of this year should grow by 20 percent,” Kudlow said.
Kudlow also said Trump wants “lower taxes and regulations, strong energy sector, and fair and reciprocal trade.”
“Those are the policies that created a boom over the past three years plus,” Kudlow said.
Kudlow reacted to U.S. employers cutting 20.5 million jobs in April, a record-shattering number that pushed unemployment to 14.7 percent, the highest level since the Great Depression, as the coronavirus pandemic triggered an unprecedented economic catastrophe.
The grim Labor Department report provides one of the most comprehensive looks at the economic damage inflicted by the virus outbreak and subsequent stay-at-home measures mandated by states to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Kudlow said that the unemployment condition is a function of the coronavirus.
"I think of it more of a pandemic contraction. I don't think the economic policies caused this at all," Kudlow said. "We were growing at 3 percent at an annual rate at the first two months of this year and yet here we are."
More than a decade of job gains were erased in a single month; the stunning job losses are more than double what the U.S. saw during the 2008 financial crisis.
Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected the report to show that unemployment rose to 16 percent in April and that employers shed 21.8 million jobs, essentially erasing all job gains in the past decade.
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The paralyzed U.S. economy, and the tidal wave of layoffs, pushed the unemployment rate — which sat at a half-century low of 3.5 percent in February — to the highest level since record-keeping began in 1948. The previous record was 10.8 percent in late 1982. The number of job losses is also the biggest on record dating back to 1939. Previously, the largest one-month job loss number was 1.96 million in September 1945, at the end of World War II.
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A more inclusive measure of what's called underemployment, which counts those not looking for work and individuals who are reduced to part-time hours for economic reasons, hit an all-time high of 22.8 percent.
As expected, the leisure and hospitality sector bore the biggest brunt of job losses, shedding more than 7.6 million jobs in April alone, 5.5 million that stemmed from eating and drinking establishments.
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