A pedestrian wearing a face mask walks at Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York, the United States, on April 28, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)

The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent in April, the highest level since the Great Depression. Analysts, however, believe the worst is yet to come.

WASHINGTON, May 8  -- New data showed that U.S. employers cut a staggering 20.5 million jobs in April, erasing a decade of job gains since the global financial crisis and pushing the unemployment rate to a record 14.7 percent.

While this marks the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression, analysts said the figure does not capture the full scale of the COVID-19-induced job crisis, and the worst is yet to come.

LABOR MARKET "IN FREE FALL"

In April, the unemployment rate surged by 10.3 percentage points to 14.7 percent, the largest over-the-month increase in the history of the series dating back to January 1948, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday.

"As tragic as this number is, it comes as little surprise as more than 26 million individuals had filed for unemployment benefits between the March employment survey and the April survey," Jay H. Bryson, acting chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities, wrote in an analysis.

Since mid-March, numerous U.S. states have rolled out "stay-at-home" policies and shut down nonessential businesses in a bid to slow the spread of the virus, leading companies to cut millions of jobs in weeks.

"There was no sub-category that was spared from the carnage," Bryson said.

Employment in leisure and hospitality plummeted by 7.7 million, or 47 percent, the report showed. Almost three-quarters of the decrease, or 5.5 million, occurred in food services and drinking places.