The coronavirus economic woes bludgeoned the Bay Area’s suddenly feeble economy in March, unleashing a loss of 27,000 jobs — the worst month for the region’s employment market since the Great Recession, a grim new government report released Friday showed.

California staggered to a loss of 99,500 jobs last month, a setback that abruptly terminated the state’s record-setting economic expansion, the Employment Development Department reported Friday. The statewide unemployment rate jumped to 5.3 percent, a huge one-month increase from February’s all-time record-low jobless rate of 3.9 percent.

“We are now in a pandemic-induced recession here in the State of California,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a news briefing Friday to provide an update on the coronavirus situation statewide.

The Bay Area lost 27,200 jobs during March, the region’s worst one-month job loss in nearly 11 years, this news organization’s analysis of the EDD figures shows. The EDD report was the first to sketch out a comprehensive picture of coronavirus-releated job losses on the Bay Area economy.

The San Francisco-San Mateo region accounted for more than half of all positions shed in the Bay Area with a devastating loss of 13,700 jobs. Tech-heavy Santa Clara County lost 8,400 jobs in March. The East Bay fared the best of the Bay Area’s three major urban centers, losing 3,300 positions.

“This is just the beginning,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “We are headed for double-digit unemployment rates in April and May in the Bay Area and the state.”

For a variety of reasons, the economic landscape in the Bay Area and California is expected only to darken in the coming several weeks.

At least 3.1 million California workers have lost their jobs over a five-week period that started on March 12, Gov. Newsom estimated on Friday.

The March jobs report from the EDD doesn’t necessarily reflect all the workers who have filed for unemployment after they were furloughed, let go temporarily, or suffered reduced hours. Plus, the report was based on a monthly state survey that EDD researchers had completed a few days before the business shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders were issued.

By the time the unemployment reports for the Bay Area roll in over the next couple of months, the Bay Area could suffer a loss of 835,000 jobs, according to an April 8 forecast issued by the Stockton-based Center for Business and Policy Research that’s headed up by economist Jeffrey Michael.

“We think April will be the worst month for the job losses, and we are seeing May as the peak for the unemployment rate,” Michael said Friday. “The job losses should be done by May. We anticipate April will bring a report unlike what we’ve ever seen before.”

A steadily expanding number of Bay Area companies continue to file official warnings of upcoming or current layoffs.

Still, a sharp economic recovery is anticipated statewide as well as in the Bay Area, said economist Christopher Thornberg, founding partner with Beacon Economics.

“It will be a V-shaped recovery,” Thornberg said. “There are a lot of hopeful signs.”

Countless businesses have shut their doors, furloughed employees, and cut jobs. Retail shoppers rarely ventured from their homes amid an array of shelter-in-place orders. Friday’s report was the first to reflect the job losses that occurred since the regional and statewide stay at home orders were issued.

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California jobless claims: 8.6 million amid shutdowns Although the shutdown of the respective economies in the Bay Area, California, and United States was abrupt and destructive, the employment and economic rebound might not follow a similarly swift path upward, economists warned.

“Even after the California economy reopens, the process of bringing back employees will be a gradual and probably lengthy one,” said Michael Bernick, a former director of the state EDD.

The Bay Area’s restaurant, hotel, arts, and entertainment industries suffered the worst of the economic infections due to the coronavirus, according to a Beacon Economics and UC Riverside assessment of the EDD data.

Hotels, restaurants, beverage places, arts facilities, and entertainment centers lost a total of 17,600 jobs during March in the Bay Area — a head-spinning 65 percent of the 27,200 positions the nine-county region lost last month, the Beacon and UC Riverside analysis found.

In March, restaurant, hotel, beverage, arts, and entertainment job losses totaled 7,400 in Santa Clara County, 6,100 in the San Francisco-San Mateo region, and 2,400 in the East Bay, Beacon Economics determined.

Tech companies managed to weather the coronavirus economic hurricane, but only in Santa Clara County and the East Bay. During March, tech employers added 500 jobs in Santa Clara County and 200 in the East Bay. However, the tech sector lost 5,100 jobs in the San Francisco-San Mateo region.

Despite the prospect of brutal job losses during the spring, a rebound is in the works by June.once the economy is unlocked in California and nationwide, Thornberg predicted.

“There are restaurants, hotels, movie theaters that are going to reopen,” Thornberg said. “And when they reopen they are going to need people to work for them. The vast majority of closed companies will reopen.”