American private-sector shed around 20.2 million jobs in April, the worst month on record, as per the report of Automatic Data Processing (ADP) National Employment.
The US has been grappling with coronavirus pandemic which has so far infected more than a million people in the country while also claiming lives of more than 65,000 people.
According to CNN, the losses were broad-based across small, medium, and large-sized businesses while the services sector was hit the hardest -- 16 million service jobs were lost last month.
"Job losses of this scale are unprecedented. The total number of job losses for the month of April alone was more than double the total jobs lost during the Great Recession," Ahu Yildirmaz, co-head of the ADP Research Institute was quoted as saying.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that the world economy is likely to contract sharply by "minus three per cent" due to coronavirus pandemic.
( With inputs from ANI )