More than 4.4 million workers in the United States filed unemployment claims during the week ending April 18, while the seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate surged to a record high of 11.0 percent, Labor Department figures show.
"This marks the highest level of the seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate in the history of the seasonally adjusted series," the Labor Department said, also noting that "the COVID-19 virus continues to impact the number of initial claims and insured unemployment."
The previous insured unemployment rate was 8.2 percent for the week ending April 4, which, when announced last week, broke the previous record of 7.0 percent set in May of 1975.
While the newly announced 4.43 million jobless claims number is lower than the record-setting 6.9 million claims filed during the week ending March 29, it brings the total unemployment claims filed in the last five weeks to an astounding 26 million, wiping out all jobs created since the 2008 financial crisis and then some.
"The U.S. economy is hemorrhaging jobs at a pace and scale never before recorded," said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco. "It compares to a natural disaster on a national scale."
The new jobless claims report comes on the heels of dismal data last week showing a record drop in retail sales in March and the biggest decline in factory output since 1946.
Roughly 95 percent of the U.S. population is now under stay-at-home orders, and many factories, restaurants, stores, and other businesses are closed or have seen sales shrivel.
"My anxiety is through the roof right now, not knowing what’s going to happen,” said Laura Wieder, who was laid off from her job managing a now-closed sports bar in Bellefontaine, Ohio.
The mounting economic fallout almost certainly signals the onset of a global recession, with job losses that are likely to dwarf those of the Great Recession more than a decade ago.
Still, in her remarks, the IMF head struck a hopeful note, insisting the crisis will eventually pass and urging governments to adjust policies to give economies the best chance for a quick bounce back.
The Trump administration has also sought ways to safely restart business activity. One such move to support reopening the economy is coordination of efforts between the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and local governments to ramp up contact tracing.
"We're going to deploy specific coronavirus teams on a 12-month, 18-month rotation to each and every state and that information should be reaching your state—those personnel—this week," Pence told governors, the report said.
The initiative is one of the first large-scale federal actions to enhance contact tracing efforts in states and territories.
Health officials and experts have said repeatedly that contact tracing is a key part of efforts to limit the scale of future outbreaks when restrictions are lifted and, as such, tracing is a critical component of plans to restart business activity.
Among moves to help distressed workers, the $2.2 trillion emergency relief bill signed into law by President Donald Trump on March 27 gives states more flexibility to extend unemployment compensation.
Still, many economists believe there is still more downside for the labor market.