Unemployment claims could climb from 281,000 to more than 2 million this week, economists forecast

The number of Americans who filed initial unemployment claims this week could surge past two million, an all-time high, one dire new forecast suggests.

Goldman Sachs economists are predicting next week's Labor Department report will show that 2.25 million Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits this week as the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic continued to take a toll on the U.S. economy and forced layoffs around the country, CNN reports. This would be the highest number on record, surpassing the 695,000 unemployment claims made during a week in the fall of 1982.

It would also be a massive spike from the 281,000 Americans who filed for unemployment benefits last week, according to the Labor Department's most recent report. Already, this Thursday report of last week's data showed a bigger weekly percentage increase in the number of Americans filing initial unemployment claims than during the Great Recession, and economists at the time warned the next report would be far bleaker.

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This analysis comes as "many U.S. states have reported unprecedented surges in jobless claims," economist David Choi wrote, per Bloomberg. And while Choi said it's "possible that claims were front-loaded to start off the week ... or that our sample is biased toward states with a larger increase in claims, even the most conservative assumptions suggest that initial jobless claims are likely to total over 1 million."