This is Planet Money from NPR.

Here at Planet Money we've been hearing from a lot of our listeners about how their lives have been turned upside down.

My name is Chelsea Spring. I live in Long Island City, New York.

My name is Lori Winslow and I live in Lucifer, Colorado.

My name is Katie Scoggan. I've lived in New York City for the last 13 years.

My name is David Rude and I live in Cincinnati.

I am a Gourmet Ice Cream producer.

Basically I'm a symphony musician.

Managing director of a skincare facility.

I am a documentary filmmaker.

They were like all of us a few weeks ago watching the country slowly shut down.

And then all at once they were no longer just spectators.

In a period of about 24 to 48 hours, literally every gig that I had on my calendar was wiped out.

When we were told our distributor is not picking up their last order and that they're not placing any more orders until further notice.

It became very clear that there was no other job that I could go out there to get.

And then when I was informed that Thursday would be my last day on payroll.

All of them suddenly without work, along with more than 3 million other people in America.

On Thursday morning the Department of Labor released its weekly unemployment claims.

Now this never makes the news.

Usually just a few hundred thousand people sign up and nobody talks about it.

But at 8.30 a.m. on Thursday they announced 3 million, 283 thousand people filed new claims for unemployment.

In a week, the worst spike in unemployment the country has ever seen.

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