Jobless claims soar to record-breaking 6.6 million

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits spiked to a record-breaking 6.6 million. Yahoo Finance reporter Heidi Chung breaks down the numbers with the On The Move panel.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: I've also got Heidi Chung, who's going to help us understand what these jobless numbers mean. Heidi?

HEIDI CHUNG: Hi, Adam. Yeah, so the weekly jobless claims report we got out this morning really showing us the shocking labor market deterioration caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits spiked to a record-breaking 6.648 million claims for the week ended March 28. Again that's 6.648 million. Now consensus expectations were for three, excuse me, 3.76 million claims. And the prior week's figure was actually revised higher, to 3.307 million from 3.283 million.

And prior to the week ending March 21st, the previous record was for 695,000 claims filed the week ended October 2, 1982. Now taking a look at the states that reported the highest number of claims, California topping that list, reporting initial claims last week estimating about 879,000 claims on an adjusted basis. That's up from 186,000 the prior week, and it's the largest increase amongst all of the states and territories.

Pennsylvania had an estimated total of about 406,000 claims, following the 377,000 we saw the prior week. New York with 366,000, and Michigan reporting 311,000. So we are seeing a bit of a correlation between the states with the highest number of infections as well as with the states with the highest claims there.

So the number of people filing for unemployment benefits are expected to only get worse from here as well. So mostly because of all of the people that were trying to file for claims were unable to do so because of the fact that they weren't able to reach somebody on the phone or file them online. There is a massive backlog right now.

As we're seeing these different complaints coming in, I've had a bunch of complaints on my own Twitter account of people complaining about not being able to speak to anybody for nine or so days so far. And I also want to point out that those people that were previously unable to file for unemployment insurance-- such as those that are self-employed as well as independent contractors-- are now going to be able to file claims thanks to the CARES Act that was signed into effect last week. Adam?

ADAM SHAPIRO: Heidi, thank you very much. And we should point out that Robert Kaplan-- the Federal Reserve Bank president out of Dallas-- has warned everybody unemployment could shoot into the teens-- mid-teens, and then be at about 8%.