来源：中国日报

当地时间5月9日，《纽约时报》用整个头版的版面，等比例展示了美国近年来的失业率变化情况，图示显示，今年4月美国失业人数“飞流直下三千尺”，整个竖版差点快放不下……

“失业有多严重？看看这个图表吧！” 《纽约时报》在报道中提到，4月以来美国经济进一步陷入危机，失业人数达2050万，失业率飙升至14.7％，创大萧条以来最高值。

The American economy plunged deeper into crisis last month, losing 20.5 million jobs as the unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent, the worst devastation since the Great Depression.

这些数据来自美国劳工部7日发布的月度报告，《纽约时报》表示，报告清晰展示了疫情期间美国经济损失的广度和深度，以及蔓延的速度。

几乎从任何角度来看，这都是一份惨淡的报告。有工作的成年人比例为51.3%，是有记录以来最低的；据报道，有近1100万人因为找不到全职工作，而被迫在做兼职工作，在疫情爆发前这一数字约为400万。

From almost any vantage point, it was a bleak report. The share of the adult population with a job, at 51.3 percent, was the lowest on record. Nearly 11 million people reported working part time because they couldn’t find full-time work, up from about four million before the pandemic.

文章称，失业已经影响到整个经济，影响到每个主要行业。4月份，休闲和酒店等行业首当其冲，连医疗保健行业也减少了100多万个工作岗位。低收入群体受到的打击尤其严重，包括许多妇女和少数民族。

Job losses have encompassed the entire economy, affecting every major industry. Areas like leisure and hospitality had the biggest losses in April, but even health care shed more than a million jobs. Low-wage workers, including many women and members of racial and ethnic minorities, have been hit especially hard.

美国银行首席美国经济学家米歇尔·迈耶直呼 “这简直是破纪录”，“在经济衰退中，通常需要几个月或几个季度的时间才能显现出来的事情，这次在几周内就发生了。”

“It’s literally off the charts,” said Michelle Meyer, head of U.S. economics at Bank of America. “What would typically take months or quarters to play out in a recession happened in a matter of weeks this time.”

“我原以为大衰退是一辈子才会发生一次，但这次更糟。”标准普尔评级公司首席经济学家贝丝·安·波维诺表示。

“I thought the Great Recession was once in a lifetime, but this is much worse,” said Beth Ann Bovino, chief U.S. economist at S&P Global.

《纽约时报》还提到了报告中的一个“亮点”，近80%的失业者表示，他们是被暂时解雇，预计将在未来几个月重返工作岗位。

The one bright spot in Friday’s report was that nearly 80 percent of the unemployed said they had been temporarily laid off and expected to return to their jobs in the coming months.

上周五早上，特朗普总统在接受福克斯新闻采访时支持了这一观点。“这些工作岗位都会回来、很快就会回来，” 特朗普说，“明年我们将迎来非凡的一年。”

President Trump endorsed this view in an interview Friday morning on Fox News. “Those jobs will all be back, and they’ll be back very soon,” Mr. Trump said, “and next year we’re going to have a phenomenal year.”

但均富会计师事务所首席经济学家黛安·斯旺克表示，这种乐观是错误的，许多工作岗位是无法恢复的。

But Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, said that such optimism was misplaced, and that many of the jobs could not be recovered.

“这将是一个艰难的现实，”斯旺克说，“这些‘休假’是永久性的，不是暂时性的。”

“This is going to be a hard reality,” Ms. Swonk said. “These furloughs are permanent, not temporary.”

网友看后“炸开了锅”：翻开报纸，满眼都是“失业”两个字。

也有网友：虽然失业率不足20%，但失业人数远超经济大萧条时期。