Fed's Kashkari: Worse is yet to come on the US job front

The April US jobs report, released Friday, showed employers cut a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April amid the COVID-19 pandemic. However, worst is yet to come, according to Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Key quotes (Source: Xinhua, ABC 's This Week, Reuters)

I mean the worst is yet to come on the job front, unfortunately. And that it really is going to be, you know, as these states start to reopen and as businesses start to reopen, obviously we need them to reopen safely.

We may be in an environment of gradual relaxing and then having to clamp back down again around the country as the virus continues to spread. To solve the economy, we must solve the virus. Let's never lose sight of that fact.

What I've learned in the last few months, unfortunately, is more likely to be a slow, more gradual recovery.

When we look around the world, there's evidence that when countries relax their economic controls, the virus tends to flare back up again. And the longer this goes on, unfortunately, the more gradual the recovery is likely to be.

The April US jobless rate tripled to 14.7% to hit the highest level since 1930. The US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Fox News on Sunday that the labor market is probably "going to get worse before they get better," acknowledging that the current jobless rate may have already hit 25 percent, according to Reuters.