US private payrolls sank by a record 20.2 million in April as coronavirus layoffs persisted, according to a Wednesday report by ADP.
The monthly decline was the worst in the report's history going back to 2002. While severe, the losses were slightly less than the 20.6 million decline expected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. March employment was revised down to a 149,000 drop from a previously reported loss of 27,000.
Still, April's jobs erased is a staggering new record — the previous peak was 834,665 jobs lost in February 2009, during the great recession.
"Job losses of this scale are unprecedented. The total number of job losses for the month of April alone was more than double the total jobs lost during the Great Recession," Ahu Yildirmaz, co-head of the ADP Research Institute, said in a statement.