Friday was a dark day for the US economy. The labor department announced more than 20 million people lost their jobs in April as the coronavirus shut down much of the economy.

Here are five key takeaways from a report that will enter the history books as the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

1) The headline figures are bad – but what lies beneath is worse

About 20.5m jobs were lost in the month and the unemployment rate shot up to 14.7%. The numbers are probably deflated, since a huge chunk of people have considered themselves out of the workforce, so they are not counted in the unemployment numbers.

About 6.5 million more people filed for unemployment since the mid-April reference week Friday’s numbers are based on.

About 6 million people left the workforce over the month, and therefore are not being counted.

2) The damage is widespread

Some 95% of industries lost jobs.

Leisure and hospitality lost 7.7m jobs. That industry has been devastated by Covid-19 closures. But the shutdown has hit industries across the country. Manufacturing lost 1.3m jobs, construction employment fell by 975,000. In healthcare, employment declined by 1.4 million, led by losses in dentist’s offices (down 503,000).

3) The report has highlighted racial inequality

The unemployment rate was highest for Hispanic Americans (18.9%), followed by black Americans (16.7%).

Although unemployment shot up for white Americans as well (from 4% to 14.2% over the month), that is probably because black workers are more likely to be working in essential jobs.

4) Things are likely to get worse and we don’t know for how long

This week’s jobs report may be the low point – but there are signs of more trouble ahead.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is still having problems misclassifying absent workers. According to Capital Economics, without that distortion the unemployment rate would have been close to 20% last month.

Another 3.2 million people filed for unemployment last week, after the survey was completed. And there was a 4.6m rise in “continuing claims” in the week ending 25 April – suggesting few of those recently laid off had returned to work.

5) One good thing – maybe?

As Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center On Budget and former chief economic adviser to Vice-President Joe Biden, noted 18 million people are on temporary layoff. The economy is opening up again in parts of the US, so maybe many of those people will soon return to work. But with no vaccine for the coronavirus in sight, and cases still rising in the US, that’s a big “maybe” – certainly not enough to justify a widely ridiculed tweet from White House council of economic advisers extolling the virtues of the pre-Covid 19 economy.