Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin waved aside jaw-dropping new jobless claims by more than 3 million Americans on Thursday morning, saying that the record-setting unemployment filing numbers "right now aren't relevant."

Mnuchin said "the good news" is a $2 trillion relief bill working its way through Congress that is aimed at alleviating income losses and other financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

He said that the aim of that package is that many people who have recently lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus outbreak will get hired back by their employers with this relief.

Asked on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" what his reaction was to seeing the 3.28 million new unemployment claims reported for the past week, Mnuchin said, "To be honest, I think these numbers right now aren't relevant whether they're bigger or shorter in the short term."

That number of jobless claims is a whopping 4.7 times higher than the prior weekly record of 695,000, which was set in October 1982.

"Obviously, there are people who have jobless claims, and the good thing about the bill is the president is protecting those people," Mnuchin said.

"So now with these plans, small businesses hopefully will be able to hire back a lot of those people."