What is going on with unemployment?

I'm going to be talking about how the staggering unemployment numbers may be shorter lived than in previous economic downfalls. I recently heard a ton of negative comments about how we're about to experience the next Great Depression and how our economy is going down the tubes due to COVID-19.

Well, I wanted to share some positive news from Goldman Sachs and some predictions from other financial institutions on how unemployment will be in the coming years. In this graph, you can see that they're predicting unemployment to be at 15% this year. Now I'm not going to lie, that number is huge. That's much higher than the highest we saw during the Great Recession at 9.9%.

The key to keep in mind is how long this unemployment is going to last. Goldman Sachs is predicting that unemployment will go back down next year. They're expecting it to go down to between 6%-8% and then back down to 5% in 2022 and 4% in 2023. When you look at the numbers from the Great Recession and the Great Depression, you can see that those lasted for years. The shorter this lasts, the better it's going to be for our economy.

It does make a lot of sense because a lot of the unemployment rates that we're seeing right now are from the service industry - the restaurants, the hotels, the cruise lines. Hopefully once COVID-19 passes, all of that will open back up and everyone will get their jobs back quickly.

I hope this helped shed some light on what's going on with unemployment. If I can answer any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. Again, my name is Jillian Jamison and I'm with the Jamison Team at Lipply Real Estate and I am opening the door to your next home. Have a great day!