CNBC Economy

U.S. consumer sentiment fell for a third straight month as people weigh the coronavirus pandemic and the possibility of an economic re-opening.

Gig workers and other self-employed individuals are trying to make sense of yet another wrinkle in a roundabout process to collect unemployment benefits.

U.S. orders for long-lasting factory goods were expected to drop 11.9% in March as the Covid-19 outbreak took hold. Durable goods orders rose 1.2% a month earlier.

The jobless claims report showed that it took only five weeks for the U.S. economy to erase all the job gains since the Great Recession.

The number represented a decline of 810,000 from the previous week, but the five-week total has now surpassed all of the job gains since the Great Recession.

As data points come in, they'll largely tell a story about the present and the near past. What they won't provide, at least for a few months, is a reliable portrait of the future.

About 4.3 million workers are expected to have filed unemployment claims last week, bringing virus-related layoffs to over 26.3 million.

The Social Capital CEO has been critical of the United States' economic reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that stimulus money should go directly to consumers and workers rather than businesses.

State and local governments are warning of a wave of layoffs and pay cuts after getting left out of the federal coronavirus relief package expected to pass Congress this week.

"Even in sectors where we're not used to seeing it, we're going to have to see personal protective equipment on all employees," said Disaster Recovery Institute International CEO Chloe Demrovsky.

Sales this month are still expected to be down about 50% compared with April 2019. However, the decline is far less than previously expected, with the coronavirus pandemic wiping out the majority of sales for the month, the firm said Wednesday.

Mortgage volume appears to be settling into a new normal, as refinance demand stays high and purchase demand sits at a five-year low.

Areas such as construction should be the first to come back, John Williams told CNBC.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has hired high-powered consultants to develop a science-based plan for the safe economic reopening of the region, state government sources told Reuters on Wednesday.

The most recent count represented a drop from the previous two weeks but still showed that the damage to the U.S. labor market remains profound.

The jobless claims report showed that it took only four weeks for the U.S. economy to erase all the job gains in the last 11 years.

"The damage that is being done every day is enormous," Expedia and IAC Chairman Barry Diller told CNBC on Thursday.

U.S. homebuilding fell more than expected in March as the Covid-19 outbreak slammed the housing industry, despite lower mortgage rates.

It wasn't supposed to work like this: The Federal Reserve was not going to have to come back and rescue the economy the way it did during the financial crisis

"It's a tremendous program to keep our business afloat," said one small business owner.