It was yet another shocking figure out of the U.S. Labor Department Thursday.
Jobless rolls continued to swell due to the coronavirus shutdown, with 6.6 million Americans filing first-time unemployment claims in the week ended April 4, and bringing the total over the past three weeks to more than 16 million.
The most recent number represents a decline of 261,000 from a week ago, which revised up by 219,000 to nearly 6.9 million.
Prior to the social distancing efforts used to combat the coronavirus spread, the jobs market had been strong. In the six-month period prior to a shutdown that has taken offline much of the U.S. economy’s capacity, nonfarm payroll growth had averaged 221,000 a month.
However, March saw a decline of 701,000 that only began to measure how deeply the virus had impacted the employment situation.
