Nonfarm payrolls dropped by 701,000 in March, according to Labor Department numbers released Friday that only begin to show the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus crisis. It was the first decline in payrolls since September 2010 and came close to the May 2009 financial crisis peak of 800,000. Some two-thirds of the drop came in the hospitality industry, particularly bars and restaurants forced to close during the economic shutdown. That headline number reflects the count from establishments the government surveyed for its report. The household survey, which asks individual residences about their employment situation, showed a plunge of nearly 3 million.

The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% — from 3.5% — its highest level since August 2017 as employers just began to cut payrolls ahead of social distancing practices that shut down large swaths of the U.S. economy in order to stop the virus's spread. An alternative measure that captures discouraged workers and those holding jobs part time for economic reasons jumped from 7% to 8.7%, its highest since March 2017. Those higher unemployment rates come amid a tumble in the labor force participation rate to 62.7%, a 0.7 percentage point fall and the lowest since August 2018 for a number that had been gradually rising.

Despite the other bad numbers, wages continued to rise, increasing 3.1% year over year, slightly better than expected. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a payroll decline of 10,000 and for the unemployment rate to rise to 3.7%. "Today's numbers are shockingly bad and an understatement of the damage already done to the U.S. economy," said Nick Bunker, economic research director at job search site Indeed. "If this is an indication of what was happening before the full force of the crisis hit, then it will be hard to come up with the words to describe the numbers in future months."