Unemployment rate 'undoubtedly' higher than 10.2%: Fed's Evans
'It doesn't capture all the people who'd really like to work,' says Charles Evans
The unemployment rate is "undoubtedly" higher than the 10.2% reported for July, Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans said on Sunday.
"It doesn't capture all the people who'd really like to work and somehow don't fill out the surveys right," Evans told "Face the Nation." "I think there's a percentage point discrepancy. ... We are down 12.9 million jobs since February."
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Evans pointed out that different racial groups are experiencing varied unemployment rates amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"There's a huge amount of inequality. ... Black unemployment is over 14%," Evans said. "Hispanic unemployment is over 12%. White unemployment is 9%. So that inequality gap has persisted."
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia touted the 10.2% unemployment rate on "Your World" on Friday.
People wait to speak with representatives from the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission about unemployment claims July 9, 2020, in Midwest City, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) (Associated Press)
"I thought we could do it by the end of this year, and it turns out we are getting there even sooner," Scalia said.
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Evans underscored that the U.S. did not have the virus under control, and many workers are unable to return to their jobs because of it. His Minneapolis counterpart Neel Kashkari recently advocated for another hard coronavirus lockdown.
"If we were to lock down hard for a month or six weeks, we could get the case count down so that our testing and our contact tracing was actually enough to control," Kashkari told "Face the Nation" last week.