A record 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits as the coronavirus slams economy

The U.S. unemployment rate has likely risen to 5.5 percent already -- a level not seen since 2015.

A record 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, as restaurants, hotels, barber shops, gyms and more shut down in a nationwide effort to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

Last week saw the biggest jump in new jobless claims in history, surpassing the record of 695,000 set in 1982. Many economists say this is the beginning of a massive spike in unemployment that could result in over 40 million Americans losing their jobs by April.

Laid off workers say they waited hours on the phone to apply for help. Websites in several states, including New York and Oregon, crashed because so many people were trying to apply at once.

Bank of America predicted 3 million people would apply for unemployment benefits last week, but even Wall Street’s expectations were too low for how much the coronavirus is slamming the economy.

This is “widespread carnage," said Jacob Robbins, an assistant economics professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, "And it’s going to get worse.”

The nation’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in February, a half-century low, but that has likely risen already to 5.5 percent, according to calculations by Martha Gimbel, a labor economist at Schmidt Futures. The nation hasn’t seen that level of unemployment since 2015.