The national unemployment rate surged to 14.7% in April, hitting the worst showing in the U.S. since the Great Depression. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment last peaked at 10% in October 2009, during the worst month of the Great Recession. Since then, unemployment has steadily declined, before the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out a decade of progress. The only other time in the past 40 years that U.S. unemployment reached double-digit levels was in December 1982, at 10.8%, which – up until now – was the post-Depression-era peak. Monthly BLS data does not reach back prior to 1948, but the Great Depression’s unemployment rate was estimated to peak at 24.9% in 1933.
