Welcome to Thoughts on the market. I'm Ellen Zentner, Chief U.S.

Economist for Morgan Stanley Research.

And I'm Michael Zezes, head a public policy research and municipal strategy.

And on this special edition of the podcast we'll be talking about the

impact of the coronavirus on the US economy and the moves by policy makers to

help contain the disruption. It's Thursday March 26th at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

Ellen, let's start with the elephant in the room.

This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the record 3.28 million workers applied for unemployment benefits last week.

How do we think about the trajectory for employment numbers moving forward?

Well that was an alarming number.

I mean 3.3 million jobless claims in one week, let's put it in perspective. Even around the financial crisis, you know, this

is five times higher than in any worse week that we saw at that time.

I mean, it's not surprising as social distancing measures have deepened in various states and across the country

More businesses have had to shut their doors most of those small businesses and most of the labor force sits in small businesses.

So this surgeon claims is the beginning.

I think it's going to stay elevated here for a time.

But I do think that these jobless claims numbers are going to be fairly front-loaded.

And so this may be the worst week in terms of absolute numbers, but I don't think that it's

the end of it.

So a high fraction of those layoffs were likely in hospitality and

entertainment, other types of discretionary services. So does that mean that

you'd expect those jobs to return down the road? Yeah, I absolutely expect those jobs to return. It's just a

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