- Meanwhile, the coronavirus

is still taking a heavytoll when it comes to jobs.

Today's latest unemploymentfigures show 1.5 million

laid off workers applied forgovernment benefits, last week,

though, the number is down.

It is the 10th straightweek of job losses,

since the peak in mid-March.

Unemployment benefits are helping laid off

and furloughed workers stay afloat.

Those jobless paymentsreached $94 billion in May,

six times the previous record set in 2010.

- Mark Hamrick is asenior economic analyst

at bankrate.com, and hejoins us now for more,

Mark, it's good to have you.

So what do you make ofthese 10 straight weeks

of declining jobless claim numbers?

- It's great to see decliningnumbers, Jenna and John,

but we're still extremely elevated.

If you take the special pandemic

unemployment assistance program,

that was part of the CARES Act,

and take those numbers andadd those to the new claims

that you talked about in the lead in,

we're talking about nearly30 million Americans

who are part of continuing claims.

That's quite astounding.

It's consistent with what we saw

in the May employment numbers,

where we had about 21million Americans jobless,

another 10 million working part-time,

who'd like to have full-time work.

So I think we're balancingoptimism and realism here,

not exactly certain where to go.

And every day that we get

some less than optimisticnews on the virus,

that gives pause

with respect to theeconomic recovery as well.

- Mark, so there's still a lotof fluctuation in the market.

So is it, are we able to say

whether the worst of theeconomic crisis is behind us?

- Based on what we know right now, John,

I think that that's a plausible scenario,

but as Federal Reserve ChairmanJerome Powell cautioned,

at his news conference, thisis gonna be a long slog.

The fed itself doesn'tsee the unemployment rate

going below 9% before the end of the year.

our own Bankrate Economic Survey,

it indicated that it couldremain as high as 10%

through May of next year.

So that's in line with what we saw

during the worst of the financial crisis,

and great recession.

So we're hoping for better,but we also need to,

I would say, maintain asomewhat sober outlook,

because we're balancing the reactions

to the medical or healthcare crisis,

as well as the economic crisis.

- Yesterday, the fedannounced that it'll keep

interest rates low forthe foreseeable future.

How do you think this willhelp stimulate the economy?

- Great question, Jenna.

As we reported, our MortgageRate Survey, at Bankrate,

we saw a record low inmortgage rates this week,

right below 3 1/2%.

And so this is helping to keep

the housing market fairly robust,

but you can't have a macroeconomy, or broader economy,

that's suffering, with a housing market

that would be flexing its muscle forever.

So we need well-qualifiedconsumers out there to borrow,

so low rates will do someof heavy lifting here,

but ultimately it's a strongjob market, what we need.

In the meantime, we dohave low interest rates

that will help on the borrowing side.

- Speaking specificallyabout the stock market,

it was pretty volatile today.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average

closed down more than 1800 points.

What do you think this meansfor the recovery overall?

- We're reminded John,that volatility works

to the downside and the upside,

and we had seen a more than 30% bounce

in the major averages fromthe lows earlier this year.

Indeed, the setbackthat we just experienced

took those, that majoraverages all the way back

to just before Memorial Day.

So I wouldn't connect, necessarily,

the performance of WallStreet with Main Street.

Sometimes they're quite disconnected.

But certainly it's something

that can weigh on consumer confidence.

If we were to see a prolong,

a further pullback in the stock market.

- All right, Mark Hamrickwith bankrate.com.

It's always good to have you on.

We appreciate yourinsights, thank you so much.

- Thank you.