More than 701,000 U.S. jobs lost amid coronavirus pandemic, new report shows

Global stocks are down Friday after the U.S. government said employers cut 701,000 jobs in March as they shut down or sharply curtailed business due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The United States shed more than 701,000 jobs last month as the quick-spreading coronavirus ripped through major cities and small towns alike nationwide, marking the end of a record-long streak of uninterrupted payroll gains dating back almost a decade.

The unemployment rate jumped to 4.4% in March from a 50-year low of 3.5% in February, the Labor Department said Friday. The figures however do not yet fully reflect the scope of unemployment-insurance claims filed in the last two weeks of March, after the economy was all but shutdown by the global pandemic.

Nearly 10 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in that time frame, far surpassing the figure for any corresponding period on record.

For its report, the department used as its point of reference the week ending in March 12, which came just days before the nation slowly started to close non-essential business. In the weeks since, the situation in the United States has rapidly deteriorated as the number of coronavirus continues to climb.

As of Friday morning, the US had a total of 245,601 cases, nearly a quarter of the world’s 1,000,000 infections. And more than 90% of Americans are currently living under some version of a shutdown order

“There’s no comparison to this shock,” Gregory Daco, Oxford’s chief U.S. economist, told the Wall Street Journal.

“The sudden drop in economic activity is like what you’d see in an area after a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, but it’s occurring across the entire country.”

It is the first decline in payrolls since 2010 and is near to the 800,000 jobs lost at the peak of the 2009 financial crisis. An estimated two-thirds of the massive decrease was in the hospitality industry, likely fueled by bars and restaurants forced to shutter in a bid to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Places like hotels, movie theaters and department stores have also been pushed into huge layoffs due to coronavirus closures.

Economist experts anticipate the upcoming April jobs report, if the shutdown continues, will be even more bleak. During its nearly decade-long hiring streak, the U.S. economy added 22.8 million jobs.

They are all expected to be wiped out in the coming weeks.

Some economic forecasts have the unemployment as high as 15% within the next month. It would be the worst since the 1930s, when unemployment peaked at 10% during the Great Recession.