WASHINGTON — The American job market is imploding like never before in history.
More than 6.6 million people filed unemployment claims for the first time last week, in a mushroom cloud of bad economic news that was even worse than the historically unprecedented 3.3 million new claims from the previous week.
The new jobless numbers, reported by the Bureau of Labor on Thursday morning, show the stunning extent of the economic devastation brought by the coronavirus pandemic, which has left tens of millions of workers stuck in their homes and brought everyday life to a standstill in states across the country.
The figures suggest that the pandemic has cost roughly 10 million Americans their jobs in just two weeks.
Economists who study unemployment had expected the new figures would be a bloodbath — but they didn’t think it would be this bad. Morgan Stanley had expected a number closer to 4.5 million, and Goldman Sachs had estimated roughly 5.5 million.
But the latest staggering statistics left them wondering how long the carnage can go on.
Goldman Sachs predicted this week that the U.S. economy will shrink by 34% compared to the same quarter a year earlier, and that U.S. total unemployment will soar to 15% by the middle of 2020. But the bank also predicted that half of the economic decline should be recovered by the end of this year as the contagion fades.
Cover: In this March 30, 2020, file photo, a worker leaves the the Frank P. Zeidler Municipal Building in Milwaukee. Gov. Tony Evers asked President Donald Trump on Tuesday, March 31, 2020 to issue a major disaster declaration for the state of Wisconsin due to the coronavirus pandemic, as unemployment claims hit a daily high and the state's health secretary warned lawmakers that Medicaid enrollments were going to increase dramatically. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)
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