Initial claims for unemployment insurance were 5.245 million in the week ending April 11, down by 1.370 million from the 6.615 million the prior week. Claims for the week ending April 4 were revised up by a small 9,000 from 6.606 million.

Claims are down slightly from their all-time high of 6.867 million the week of March 28. But that’s the only glimmer of good news. Over the past four week claims have averaged 5.509 million, by far the highest average since the series began in 1967. Outside of the past few weeks, the previous high for the 4-week average was 674,000 in the fall of 1982; claims now are more than 8 times that previous high.

Over the last four weeks, since the first substantive impact of the coronavirus on the U.S. job market, more than 22 million people have filed for unemployment insurance. That’s about 13 percent of the U.S. labor force in March, although not all of those people will be counted as unemployed in the jobs report. Still, the labor market has imploded as the public health response to the coronavirus, especially restrictions on movement, has led to a sharp drop in economic activity. Most of the early job losses were in restaurants and retail, but they are now also spreading to other industries, such as manufacturing, construction, healthcare and social assistance, and professional/business services.

Job losses appear to be slowing somewhat in the states that were the first to implement stay-at-home orders, but still remain multiples above their pre-coronavirus levels. And layoffs are still increasing in states that were later to implement stay-at-home orders.

In the March employment report job losses were 701,000, the biggest one-month drop in employment in 11 years. But that was before the vast majority of coronavirus-related layoffs. Employment is based on data collected during the pay period that includes the 12th of the month, and claims the week ending March 14 were 280,000, up from around 210,000 before the first coronavirus-related layoffs. But since then claims have totaled 22 million, and claims will be in the millions again next week. Some of the UI claims will not show up as job losses in the April jobs report (to be released May 8) because some workers are likely to have been rehired thanks to the Paycheck Protection Program in the stimulus law, but job losses in April will be simply unprecedented in U.S. history. The unemployment rate, which rose to 4.4 percent in March from 3.5 percent in February, is likely to move above the post-Great Depression high of 10.8 percent in late 1982.