WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. is probably “right at” the trough of the downturn, Richmond Federal Reserve president Thomas Barkin said on the eve of what will likely be a dramatic jump in the unemployment rate reported for the Labor Department’s April jobs report.
“If you were to pick a date that would be the trough of this downturn we are probably right there,” Barkin said on Thursday in webcast comments to the Greenville Chamber of Commerce in South Carolina, citing the more than 30 million unemployment claims filed in recent weeks. “We are at the bottom…There is only up from here.”
(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
