Because the March survey-week took place around March 13, ahead of the lock-downs and layoff announcements, today’s payrolls report was expected to be not quite as grim as initial claims suggested. It was catastrophic nonetheless, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting moments ago that a whopping 701K jobs were lost in March, 7x more than the 100K expected, just shy of the worst payrolls prints recorded during the financial crisis.
