If It's Thursday...

Yadda yadda, 654,000 new jobless claims, yadda, yadda, new record continuing claims, 5.84 million.

Initial claims for state jobless benefits decreased 20,000 to 654,000 in the week ended April 4, the Labor Department said in a weekly report Thursday. That was the biggest decline since the beginning of the year, and more than doubled Wall Street expectations, according to a Dow Jones Newswires survey.

The prior week's level was revised up. The four-week average -- which aims to smooth volatility -- fell 750 to 657,250.

The U.S. has lost 5.1 million jobs since the recession started in late 2007, with over two million of those losses occurring in the last three months alone, pushing the unemployment rate to a 25-year high of 8.5%. The early-April jobless claims figures, if sustained in coming weeks, point to another monthly drop in the 600,000 to 700,000 range in April.

The risk for the economy is that if the U.S. keeps losing jobs at that pace for too much longer, it could prevent a consumer-led recovery from taking hold. Federal Reserve economists now expect the jobless rate to rise "more steeply" into early 2010 before stabilizing "at a high level over the rest of the year," according to meeting minutes released Wednesday.

According to Thursday's Labor Department report, the tally of continuing jobless claims -- those drawn by workers collecting benefits for more than one week in the week ended March 28 -- surged another 95,000 to 5,840,000, the highest level since the government started keeping track in 1967.

Yadda, yadda, we're screwed.