新冠疫情对经济造成的影响日益清晰。美国劳工部将于周五早上发布三月份的就业报告。

昨天，经济学家预计该报告将表明，美国损失了10万个工作岗位，而失业率，即没有工作者所占比例，从历史最低值3.5%上升到3.8%。

但值得注意的是，这项调查的信息只更新到3月中旬，也就是初次申请失业救济人数的记录被打破之前。初次申请失业救济人数指因裁员或企业减产而丢掉工作，开始向政府申请救助的人数。

我们在上周五报道过，三月第三周初次申请失业救济人数达到创记录的328万人。今天公布的数据显示，三月第四周初次申请失业救济人数创下了660万人的新记录。

还有一线希望吗？

美国财政部长史蒂文•姆努钦表示，他预计在美国击败新冠病毒后，美国经济将迅速复苏，国内生产总值将回升，失业率也将回落至冠状病毒爆发之前的水平。但这实际上要取决于复苏的方式。

Another part of this picture that's getting clearer is the economic impact. There's a jobs report due out Friday morning from the U.S. Labor Department, it will be for the month of March.

And yesterday, economists expected it would show the U.S. lost a hundred thousand jobs and that the unemployment rate — the percentage of workers who didn't have a job would increase to 3.8 percent from its historic low of 3.5 percent.

But there's a catch. The information for that survey is only as recent as the middle of March, and that's before records started being broken for initial jobless claims. This is the number of people who just started asking the government for help because they lost their jobs in layoffs or business cutbacks.

Last Friday, we told you how that number, which accounted for the third week of March, was a record 3.28 million people. Today's figure, which measures the number of initial jobless claims in the fourth week of March, is a new record, 6.6 million people.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says when the U.S. defeats the virus, he expects the American economy will recover quickly, with gross domestic products jumping back up and unemployment dropping back down to the way they were before the coronavirus struck. That literally depends on how the recovery shapes up. 

Notes 注释

[1] account for: 为…提出理由；对…作出说明

[2] depend on: 取决(于)；有赖(于) 

[3] shape up: (事物）进展(情况)

[4] treasury: 国库，宝库 (大写)财政部，国债

[5] there's a catch: 值得注意