The recent terrible job numbers, in perspective.

The unemployment numbers are already so bad they no longer fit on the scales we’re used to. To understand them, we literally need to borrow scales from other types of jobs charts.

By the second week of March, the U.S. already registered job losses on par with the worst months of the Great Recession. About 701,000 jobs were confirmed gone, Labor Department data shows. But as terrifying as that sounds, that number portrays the calm before the storm. In the final two weeks of March, after those measurements were taken, separate Labor Department releases show nearly 10 million (9,955,000) Americans filed for unemployment benefits.

We’ve never seen anything resembling that level of pain before. Back-of-the-envelope math shows there are more unemployed people in America right now than at the Great Recession’s apex.

The previous all-time high for one week was 695,000 claims in 1982. In the week tracked by today’s jobs numbers, the week ending on the 12th of March, there were 282,000 claims. The following week? 3.3 million. By last week, it was at 6.6 million. (These numbers are adjusted for seasonal variation, so that we can make historical comparisons).

Jobless claims are the only government data that come close to keeping pace with the speed of the crisis. The unemployment-insurance system is at the heart of the government’s response to the pandemic, so it’s fitting that it’s also the leading edge of its data.

But, like the system itself, the data has been flooded beyond recognition. It no longer makes sense to look at it in the context of previous unemployment-claims filings. We need to bring in other labor-market numbers. In the charts below, we compare it to a few touchstones.

Greater than the Great Recession

From January 2008 to February 2010, the economy lost 8,705,000 jobs. The losses in that two-year period, among the most dismal in U.S. history, were likely eclipsed in the two weeks at the end of March.

Greater than the Trump Boom

From November 2016 to February 2020, the economy added about 7,275,000 jobs. It’s a job-creation record that Trump highlighted early and often, despite it being at roughly the same pace as his predecessor’s second term. Unemployment claims numbers indicate job creation is likely already in negative territory.

Greater than New York

But it’s hard to grasp abstract milestones like those above, so we also compared the late-March losses to local labor markets.

If laid-off Americans were their own state right now, they’d be the third largest, behind California and Texas (13.02 million) and right ahead of New York (9.85 million). They outnumber workers in the sixteen least populated states combined.

Yes, but

Unemployment claims at this level are an enormous strain on the system and an unprecedented disruption for millions of U.S. businesses and households, but it’s also the system working as intended.

The new stimulus package signed into law last week, the CARES Act, made more people eligible for unemployment insurance and dramatically ramped up benefits to help workers and businesses survive a prolonged period of distancing. The goal of the bailout should be to keep as many workers whole as possible for as long as they’re home and stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, as University of Massachusetts, Amherst, economist Arindrajit Dube points out on Twitter.

In normal times, an elevated unemployment claims number could be an early sign of trouble. This time, an excruciatingly high number means the system is beginning to help millions of people. But it nevertheless means pain and disruption for millions of Americans and their employers.