Federal Reserve chairman Powell is scheduled to testify before the Senate later today. Here is an excerpt from his prepared testimony:

Available economic data for the current quarter show a sharp drop in output and an equally sharp rise in unemployment. By these measures and many others, the scope and speed of this downturn are without modern precedent and are significantly worse than any recession since World War II. Since the pandemic arrived in force just two months ago, more than 20 million people have lost their jobs, reversing nearly 10 years of job gains. This precipitous drop in economic activity has caused a level of pain that is hard to capture in words, as lives are upended amid great uncertainty about the future. In addition to the economic disruptions, the virus has created tremendous strains in some essential financial markets and impaired the flow of credit in the economy.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newse...l20200519a.htm



Actually, "the scope and speed of this downturn" is the worst in American history. Even in the Great Depression unemployment took two years to reach 15.9 percent. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago we have hit an unemployment rate of 30.7 percent in two months.