The continued economic impacts of the coronavirus dominated headlines again this week as the markets remained volatile, partially driven by unprecedented job losses in major economies including the United States. Approximately 6.64 million Americans made unemployment claims in the last full week of March, with recent reports showing the economy had lost 700,000 jobs, seven times more than economists had originally projected.
“The month of April will have the first depression-magnitude job losses the country has seen since the 1930s,” said Chris Rupkey, MUFG managing director and chief financial economist. “The unemployment rate moved up from 3.5% in February to 4.4% in March, but the labor market could easily become depression-like very quickly where one out of four of your neighbors is no longer getting a paycheck. Stay tuned.”
The TSX Composite dropped 66.34 points to open Friday’s session at 13,031.56 with all but three of the 12 TSX subgroups showing losses in the first hour of Friday’s session. The TSX Venture opened Friday’s session up 1.26 points at 387.42.
In case you missed it, here is this week’s resource big news roundup:
Precious
Battery
Energy
Base
To see our previous investing big news roundups, click here.
