AS many parts of the world’s biggest economy begin to reopen after weeks of stay-at-home orders that slowed the spread of the coronavirus but gutted jobs, Americans should not expect a quick return to growth, U.S. Federal Reserve officials said Friday.

“A couple months ago I was optimistic, I was hopeful, that maybe we would have a ‘V’-shaped recovery — shut things down, clamp down on the virus, and then have a quick recovery,” Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari said in an interview on the PBS Newshour.

With a vaccine and effective treatment unlikely for a year or two, “we are in for unfortunately a slow, long recovery” from “devastating” job losses, Kashkari said.

The coronavirus crisis has sent U.S. unemployment surging to 14.7 percent, a level last seen when the country was in the throes of the Great Depression.

The U.S. economy shed a record 20.5 million jobs in April due to the lockdowns imposed by states and local governments to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, a U.S. Labor Department report showed Friday.

Because of government errors and the particular way the Labor Department measures the job market, the true picture is even worse. By some calculations, the unemployment rate stands at 23.6 percent, not far from the Depression peak of nearly 25 percent.

Interviewed by Fox News on Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that the jobs will be back. “They’ll be back very soon, and next year we are going to have a phenomenal year,” he said.

That’s not the dominant view at the Fed, which has slashed interest rates to zero, bought trillions of dollars of bonds and extended credit to local governments and businesses in an effort to prevent financial markets from imploding and keep the economy from even worse devastation.

San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, who appeared on CNN an hour later, said the Fed’s unprecedented actions, along with nearly US$3 trillion committed by the U.S. Congress for rescue efforts, should help.

“What I’m hoping in the baseline is we can come back safely, we listen to public health officials, we take it slow but gradual ... if we do those things and we reenter safely, then I expect us to have positive growth in 2021,” Daly said.

“When the coronavirus is behind us, we can reengage fully,” Daly said, noting “It won’t be quick; in my opinion, it won’t be ‘V’-shaped, it will be gradual.”

The unemployment report indicated that the vast majority of those laid off in April — roughly 75 percent — consider their job loss temporary, a result of businesses that were forced to close suddenly but hope to reopen and recall staffers.

In February, unemployment was at a more than 50-year low of 3.5 percent, and the economy had added jobs every month for a record 9 1/2 years. In March, unemployment was 4.4 percent.

“In just two months the unemployment rate has gone from the lowest rate in 50 years to the highest rate in almost 90 years,” said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial.

(SD-Agencies)