The coronavirus outbreak, or COVID-19, is pushing the U.S. economy further into historic territory.

The economy saw an unprecedented 6.648 million people applying for unemployment claims for the week ending March 28 when initial jobless claims came out on Thursday. On Friday the March jobs reports showed that the economy shed 701,000 jobs when economists were expecting a decline of 100,000.

“The monthly payroll jobs report has been upstaged by the last two weeks of unemployment claims applications totaling nearly ten million,” Chris Rupkey, MUFG managing director and chief financial economist, wrote in a note on Friday. “The 701 thousand lost payroll jobs is just a down payment on the immense losses that are already here and have yet to be counted. What is next month's figure going to be? Down 9 million? Down 15 million... The country is literally shutting down.”

Markets ended down on Friday, with the Dow down 1.69%, the S&P 500 down 1.51% and the Nasdaq 1.53%.

View photos The U.S. economy is hit a wall. (Yahoo Finance) More

And the March reports are just a sign of the times to come.

“The month of April will have the first depression-magnitude job losses the country has seen since the 1930s,” Rupkey wrote. “The unemployment rate moved up from 3.5% in February to 4.4% in March, but the labor market could easily become depression-like very quickly where one out of four of your neighbors is no longer getting a paycheck. Stay tuned. The worst is yet to come.”

Highlight: “It’s even worse,” @KPMG's Constance Hunter says about comparing today’s recession to the Great Depression. “Because during the Great Depression we didn’t have a sudden drop off the cliff like this… this is way worse than anything we saw in the Great Depression.” pic.twitter.com/zDuNM4TcRY — Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) April 3, 2020

The unemployment numbers for the week ending March 21 saw 3.307 million claims were filed before this week’s claims doubled that. And prior to the coronavirus-induced economic shock, the previous record was 695,000 claims filed the week that ended October 2, 1982.

“Net, net, job layoffs are soaring faster than any time in recorded history,” Rupkey previously wrote in a note on Thursday morning. “This looks bad and it is bad. The worst jobless claims in U.S. history means the economy has fallen into the abyss. Stay tuned. Story developing.”

View photos (Graphic: David Foster/Yahoo Finance) More

‘American workers have nowhere to hide’

The jobless claims number is likely to increase further in the coming weeks, according to Rupkey.

“We knew that massive job losses were coming because of reports that many workers were unable to file a claim for benefits even after waiting on line for hours,” he wrote.

This is perhaps an indication that U.S. economy has “skipped recession and has already moved deep into the depression zone,” he added. “American workers have nowhere to hide as the job layoffs are going to go global as world trade collapses.”