There is a time lag. And, March's #s will be adjusted accordingly as well.

I've read that some economists are saying that the real unemployment rate is about 9% right now. On May 1st, it'll be even higher.

You know, the calculator that tells you "if you don't count it, it doesn't count!"

rather than fired, and that could explain some of the numbers, but I am not sure how they are calculated.

Many of the people who think they will have a job to go back to are going to be unpleasantly surprised. Trump is not going to declare the crisis over and everybody goes back to work the next day, or maybe even the next year. The world economy is not like a light switch.

By the next week,we were seeing 386k new claims,followed by 3.8 million the next week.

The quarterly form 941 asks for number employed as of the 12th of each month. I think that is the primary input. March 12 not many had been laid off.

didn't think anything untoward was happening just knew there was a reason.
do you have any insight or even a guess as to what it will be in total? do you agree with the 47 million i've seen floated?

The announcement was 700K companies closed down and 6.6 millions filed for unemployment to date.