Unemployment hits 14.7% with experts predicting worse to come

It's been more than a month since I last reported on the record unemployment claims resulting from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, although I've mentioned many other the economic effects since then. With the issuing of the April jobs report last week, it's time for an update. I begin with Yahoo! Finance's Unemployment hits 14.7%.

Unemployment rate in the U.S. hit a record high of 14.7% in April. Yahoo Finance’s Jessica Smith breaks down the latest jobless claims.

The one piece of good news was year-over-year wage growth jumping up to 7.9%, although that is a result of most high-wage workers, such as myself, keeping our jobs while working from home while many low-wage workers have lost their jobs, particularly in hospitality, a reason that is decidedly not good news at all.

CNN provided some analysis focusing on manufacturing in Michigan in John King on jobs report: Never before have we seen anything close to that.

CNN's John King takes a look at the job losses in the US due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The raw numbers Yahoo Finance gave looked bad enough, but they're even scarier expressed in percentages. More than half of hospitality employees have lost their jobs in the past two months. I shouldn't be surprised, but wow! Also, I'm glad CNN had Representative Debbie Dingell on to explain how auto manufacturing will reopen and express her thoughts on shortening global supply lines, especially for medicines. As a diabetic, this is important to me. One of my insulin prescriptions comes from Germany and the needles I use to inject it come from Ireland. Those aren't as far away as China and India, but they are across an ocean from here. I would literally die without both of them.

Finally, ABC News elicited a frightening quote yesterday: 'Worst is yet to come on job front' amid coronavirus: Neel Kashkari.

Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank and Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist for Charles Schwab, appear on "This Week."

I think Kashkari was more comprehensible and straight forward about the economic prospects coming out of this recession than Sonders. The question being asked was "why is market soaring?" I couldn't figure out if she actually answered it, or just spouted out a bunch of investor jargon about how to deal with the market. Honestly, I think I'd get a better answer out of CNBC and long-time readers know I have my issues with that channel's economic reporting, so that's not a compliment.

I'll have more about the pandemic and the economy in the future. Until then, stay tuned for marching music for the Nebraska Democratic Primary tomorrow.