President Donald Trump has stated that "all those lost jobs will be back very soon" when answering a question about April jobless numbers in the US.
"It's fully expected, there's no surprise. Somebody said, 'oh look at this'. I'll bring it back", he said in an interview with Fox News.
The statement comes after the US Labour Department said in its monthly employment report that the country lost 20.5 million jobs in April.
"The changes in these measures reflect the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it", the report said.
The state of Washington, which continues to hold sections of its economy under lockdown over fears that COVID-19 infections have not yet peaked there, led jobless claims losses for the week that ended 2 May with 56,030 new filings. California, the most populous US state and the third largest by size, noted the largest weekly drop with 203,017 fewer filings.
The Commerce Department stated last week that the US economy dropped 4.8 percent in the first three months of 2020. It was the sharpest economic decline since the Great Recession of 2008-09 and came as COVID-19 shuttered non-essential businesses across the country’s 50 states from mid-March before many began reopening last week.
As the US continues to be the country worst hit by COVID-19, most of the 50 states in the country are under lockdown. American authorities have shuttered non-essential businesses and asked people to stay home in an effort to stop the spread of the virus. Some states have, however, said they were reopening parts of their economy from late April.