There continues to be confusion about the unemployment rate. To my mind, the only number that matters is the unemployment rate when the economy is open again and/or the virus is under control. Current figures are only useful to the extent that they help us forecast that number.

This is not how we would think about things in an ordinary recession because in an ordinary recession we wouldn't have the policy levers of public health interventions and reopenings at our disposal. This make current numbers particularly uninformative.

In particular, I couldn't care less about the number of idle workers right now. What matters is not how many idle workers there are right now, but how many there still will be when things open back up again. We don't seem to yet have a good sense of how many will go back to work.

As a matter of welfare, the frankly brilliant work done on fiscal support means that literally all of these people are being paid a very healthy wage in the meantime, and in most cases more than they were earning before. Many are being paid to spend time with their families!

To be clear, the very large number of idle workers is an enormous cost to output. But it's the cost of the virus. Pandemics are devastating and expensive not only in terms of lives but also economic resources. But those are sunk. Our focus should be on ensuring a speedy recovery.