The unemployment situation has gone from the best jobs market ever to an atrocious job market faster than at any time in history. As if last week’s preliminary report of nearly 3.3 million jobless claims was not bad enough, the jobless claims for the week ending March 27, 2020, hit an unprecedented 6.648 million. The prior week’s report was revised upward to 3.307 million.

While the number was already assumed to be bad, this one blew the icing off the cake. The Wall Street Journal was projecting 3.1 million claims for last week. As would be expected, the COVID-19 pandemic is to blame here.

The Labor Department’s four-week moving average rose by more than 1.6 million to 2,612,000, and last week’s four-week average was revised up by 6,000 to 1,004,250. Continuing claims, reported with a one-week lag, rose by 1.245 million to 3.029 million.

The Labor Department’s report said:

The COVID-19 virus continues to impact the number of initial claims. Nearly every state providing comments cited the COVID-19 virus. States continued to identify increases related to the services industries broadly, again led by accommodation and food services. However, state comments indicated a wider impact across industries. Many states continued to cite the health care and social assistance, and manufacturing industries, while an increasing number of states identified the retail and wholesale trade and construction industries.

This is expected to just be the start of the really bad economic reports in the coming weeks. Even with the $2 trillion aid package, the numbers are going to look worse than could have been imagined a month ago.

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