Jobless rate soared to 14.7% in April as U.S. shed 20.5 million jobs amid coronavirus pandemic

[progree]

31. Unemployment rate may be almost 5% higher than the reported 14.7%, says BLS in so many words:

Excerpting from Mahatmakanejeeve's #1 post above, which is straight from the BLS:

In the household survey, individuals are classified as employed, unemployed, or not in the labor
force based on their answers to a series of questions about their activities during the survey
reference week (April 12th through April 18th). Workers who indicate they were not working during
the entire survey reference week and expect to be recalled to their jobs should be classified as
unemployed on temporary layoff. In April, there was an extremely large increase in the number of
persons classified as unemployed on temporary layoff.

However, there was also a large increase in the number of workers who were classified as employed
but absent from work. As was the case in March, special instructions sent to household survey
interviewers called for all employed persons absent from work due to coronavirus-related business
closures to be classified as unemployed on temporary layoff. However, it is apparent that not all
such workers were so classified.

If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to "other reasons" (over
and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical April) had been classified as unemployed
on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been almost 5 percentage points higher
than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis). However, according to usual practice, the data
from the household survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions
are taken to reclassify survey responses.

5% on top of 14.7% puts it in round-off territory of 20%.

Remembering too that the survey week, April 12-18, is more than 3 weeks ago ... there's been a lot of layoffs since then according to the weekly unemployment claims reports.

Edited to add:

Why the unemployment rate could be 5 percentage points higher, Ethan Wolff-Mann, Yahoo Finance, May 8, 2020
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-unemployment-rate-could-be-5-percentage-points-higher-135352226.html

for a more "newsie" report of the same thing.