Torsten Slok, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities, says he is expecting Thursday's initial jobless claims report to show 8 million Americans filed for weekly unemployment benefits last week.
Why it matters: That would be the largest number ever and the fourth time in history unemployment benefits have surpassed 1 million — all of which have been in the past four weeks.
- A reading that large would also mean the U.S. has officially shed more jobs in the past four weeks than it gained during the 11 years since the end of the Great Recession.
On the other side: Economists Aaron Sojourner and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, who initially stunned markets by predicting more than 3 million claims for the week ending March 21, expect 4.8 million claims this week.