Economy Lost 701,000 Jobs in March

The U.S. lost 701,000 jobs in March, breaking a remarkable string of uninterrupted payrolls gains the past decade and revealing just the leading edge of the coronavirus-triggered hurricane that's upending America’s economy and labor market.

The unemployment rate jumped to 4.4% from a 50-year low of 3.5%, the Labor Department said Friday.

The report reflects employers’ jitters early in the month over the unprecedented economic fallout from the pandemic. But it doesn’t capture the nearly 10 million laid-off and furloughed Americans who filed initial jobless claims the past two weeks...

The U.S. economy lost a total of 701,000 jobs in March, bringing a record 10-year streak of employment gains to a halt as the coronavirus pandemic continues to hammer the workforce and shatter economic growth.

The closely watched monthly jobs data, released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, also shows the unemployment rate soared to 4.4 percentfrom 3.5 percent, after months at a half-century low.

March's data represents the tip of the iceberg, however, since the survey was conducted in the first half of the month, prior to the...