3.8 Million Initial Jobless Claims

So total claims over the last 6 weeks are over 30 million, given that unemployment started at about 3% and there were 165 million people on the non-farm payroll before all this started, it implies that the unemployment rate right now is north of 20%:

Another 3.8 million people lost their jobs in the US last week as the coronavirus pandemic continued to batter the economy. The pace of layoffs appears to be slowing, but in just six weeks an unprecedented 30 million Americans have now sought unemployment benefits and the numbers are still growing.

The latest figures from the labor department released on Thursday showed a fourth consecutive week of declining claims. While the trend is encouraging, the rate of losses means US unemployment is still on course to reach levels unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

It already has, particularly when one notes that there are likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions of claims that have not entered the system yet because of overwhelmed unemployment offices.

Unemployment peaked during the Great Depression at 24.9%.

We are likely to hit that number around mid May.

Even more concerning is that the bipartisan support of looting by the banksters and the monopolists, which will likely slow recovery.