The upcoming weekly jobless claims numbers could be even higher than the record 6.6 million announced last week, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said in a call with House Democrats on Tuesday.
"[I said] they could top last week's, and not that it will," Yellen told Newsweek. "I don't have a forecast for future weeks."
Yellen reportedly made the prediction during a conference call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other Democrat leaders, who are working on plans for a fourth stimulus package to add to the efforts to help Americans and the economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic, reports The Washington Post.
Yellen, who served as Fed chair from 2014-2018, told CNBC on Monday she thinks the unemployment rate is currently at 12 or 13% "and moving higher, and that the nation's GDP could fall by at least 30%.
"This is a huge, unprecedented, devastating hit and my hope is that we will get back to business-as-usual as quickly as possible," Yellen said, but adding that unemployment could even go "quite a lot higher" before then.
The Department of Labor last week reported 6.6 initial unemployment claims, up double from the 3.3 reported the week before, resulting in almost 10 million in just two weeks.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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