In US, 3 mn jobless seek aid in a week

Washington, May 14

Nearly 3 million laid-off workers applied for US unemployment benefits last week as the viral outbreak led more companies to slash jobs even though most states have begun to let some businesses reopen under certain restrictions.

Japan ends emergency in most regions

Tokyo: Japan’s prime minister has announced the end of the state of emergency for most regions of the country, but restrictions are being kept in place in Tokyo and seven other high-risk areas, including Osaka, Kyoto and Hokkaido. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday lifted the measure ahead of schedule in 39 of the country’s 47 prefectures, effective immediately. Abe declared a month-long state of emergency on April 7 in Tokyo and six other urban prefectures, later expanding it to the whole country through May 31.

Roughly 36 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the two months since the coronavirus first forced millions of businesses to close their doors and shrink their workforces, the Labor Department said Thursday.

Still, the number of first-time applications has declined for six straight weeks, suggesting that a dwindling number of companies are reducing their payrolls. By historical standards, though, the latest tally shows that the number of weekly jobless claims remains enormous, reflecting an economy that is sinking into a downturn. Jobless workers in some states are still reporting difficulty applying for or receiving benefits. These include free-lance, gig and self-employed workers, who became newly eligible for jobless aid this year.

The government said the unemployment rate soared to 14.7% in April, the highest rate since the Great Depression, and employers shed a stunning 20.5 million jobs. A decade’s worth of job growth was wiped out in a single month.

Even those figures failed to capture the full scale of the damage. The government said many workers in April were counted as employed but absent from work but should have been counted as temporarily unemployed.

Millions of other laid-off workers didn’t look for a new job in April, likely discouraged by their prospects in a mostly shuttered economy, and weren’t included, either. If all those were counted as unemployed, the jobless rate would have reached nearly 24 per cent. —AP

Trump rips into China, ‘very disappointed’

Washington: US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he was very disappointed in China over its failure to contain the novel coronavirus, saying the worldwide pandemic cast a pall over his US-China trade deal. “I’m very disappointed in China,” he said. “They should have never let this happen. So I make a great trade deal and now I say this doesn’t feel the same to me. The ink was barely dry and the plague came over. And it doesn’t feel the same to me,” Trump said.

Balochistan Finance Minister tests positive

Karachi: Balochistan Finance Minister Zahoor Buledi tested positive for the coronavirus, becoming the latest top politician in Pakistan and the first in the province to be infected with the disease. Buledi, in tweet on Thursday, said that he was asymptomatic and was under self-quarantine. “I’m grateful to all friends, well-wishers and supporters, who prayed for my early recovery after my test came positive. I’m in self-quarantine as per doctors guidelines,” he tweeted. Buledi is the first minister from Balochistan to test positive.