Millions more Americans filed claims for unemployment benefits last week, raising the six-week total to around 30 million.
As Fred Katayama reports, that suggests that layoffs were spreading to industries that were not initially directly impacted by business closures and disruptions related to the coronavirus.
Stay-at-home-orders, lockdowns, and layoffs due to the the pandemic drove millions more Americans to the unemployment lines last week.
The number of people filing claims for jobless benefits totaled 3.8 million.
While that's down from the prior week, it was higher than economists had expected.
Around 30 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in the last six weeks alone.
That's nearly one-fifth of the working population.
The claims suggest that layoffs have spread beyond the industries that were initially directly hurt by business closures and disruptions.
It follows news on Wednesday that the economy shrank in the first three months of the year at its fastest pace since the Great Recession, marking the end of the longest expansion in U.S. history.
The drop in consumer spending was the biggest driver behind that contraction.
Investors got more evidence of that Thursday when the Commerce Department reported that consumer spending plunged 7.5% in March as income fell 2%.
With stores closed and layoffs widespread, consumers - who account for two-thirds of the economy - are tightening their belts, further dragging down GDP.