US jobless claims preview: Economists see record UI beginning to slow - Business Insider

On Thursday, the Labor Department will release US weekly jobless claims for the week ending April 11. The median consensus estimate from economists is 5.46 million claims, according to Bloomberg data.In the last three weeks, nearly 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance as coronavirus-induced layoffs persist. If Thursday's report meets or exceeds the consensus estimate, it will show the US has wiped out all jobs created since the Great Recession in just a matter of weeks.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Economists expect that a report due to be released Thursday from the Labor Department will show that the US has wiped out all jobs created since the Great Recession in just a matter of weeks as the coronavirus pandemic continues to slam the economy. The median consensus estimate from economists is that US weekly jobless claims will be 5.46 million for the week ending April 11, according to Bloomberg data. That would be a slight decrease from the 6.6 million claims filed in the week ending April 4, the first week that record unemployment filings have declined since coronavirus layoffs began. Still, the consensus estimate would bring total filings for unemployment insurance to more than 22 million over the course of four weeks. That means in about one month, the US economy will have erased all of the jobs created since the 2008-2009 recession.

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Read more: MORGAN STANLEY: Investors have a rare opportunity to make low-risk profits in 2020. Here's a 3-part strategy for pulling it off.“If our forecast is close to the mark, it would push the four-week total to almost 25 million, over 10 times the prior worst four-week period in the last 50-plus years,” Brett Ryan, senior economist at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a Friday note. His forecast for the week ending April 11 is 8 million claims, one of the highest estimates.

He continued: “This record surge in claims should push the unemployment rate up to 17% in the April data, a new post-World War II high.” Going forward, economists will watch to see any trend that claims are declining as the coronavirus outbreak continues. “We think the numbers will come down from here,” Michael Gapen, chief US economist at Barclays, told Business Insider.Yet it's likely that claims will remain much higher from pre-coronavirus reports. States are continuing to work through major backlogs of claims, and with the passage of the CARES Act, more people have become eligible for unemployment insurance. That's likely to keep claims elevated, according to economists from Bank of America.