Poll: More Voters Ready to Return to Work, Less Concerned Over COVID-19

Asbury Park, N.J. (PPD) — More voters are ready to return to work and less concerned about coronavirus (COVID-19) infections, a new poll finds. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds 43% say “it is time for America to get back to work,” up from just 36% on April 16.

Now, only 38% disagree and believe that the country is not ready to return to work. While 52% are at least still somewhat concerned about personally getting the coronavirus if they go back to work, the figure is down from 71% in the prior survey.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of voters believe by June that a lot of the country should be back to normal. But 44% disagree.

Last Thursday, the U.S. Labor Department (DOL) reported initial jobless claims rose slightly more than expected by 3,839,000 for the week ending April 25, due to the mitigation efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19).

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate rose again to 12.4% for the week ending April 18. That marked the highest level of the seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate in the history of the series.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 18 was 17,992,000, an increase of 2,174,000 from the previous week’s revised level. That also marked the highest level of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment in the history of the seasonally adjusted series.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted April 30 – March 3, 2020 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.