A large swath of Massachusetts’ 3.7 million-person pre-coronavirus workforce has filed for unemployment in the last two weeks according to new figures released by the U.S. Department of Labor Thursday morning.

Jobless claims rose by 140,546 during the week ending Saturday, March 21. Combined with the 7,449 who had filed applications the previous week, the state’s number of newly jobless now stands at 147,995.

Likely included in Massachusetts’ tally of the unemployed are 17,847 who held direct hotel-related jobs and 66,799 who held jobs that support hotels.

Excluded from the federal statistics are self-employed, gig and contract workers like barbers and stylists who are out of work or have seen demand for their services evaporate in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and state and local restrictions on businesses intended to combat the virus’ spread.

The same Department of Labor statistics show nearly 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week – more than quadruple the previous record of 695,000 set in October 1982 – amid a widespread economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus.

Layoffs are sure to accelerate as the U.S. economy sinks into a recession. Revenue has collapsed at restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, gyms, and airlines. Auto sales are plummeting, and car makers have close factories. Most such employers face loan payments and other fixed costs, so they’re cutting jobs to save money.

Ellen Zentner, an economist at Morgan Stanley, said in a note to clients that 17 million jobs could be lost through May – twice the entire 8.7 million jobs that were lost in the Great Recession. She expects the unemployment rate to average 12.8 percent in the April-June quarter, which would be the highest level since the 1930s. By comparison, the highest jobless rate during the Great Recession, which ended in 2009, was 10 percent.

Still, Zentner also expects the economy to start recovering by the second half of the year. It will take time for things to return to something close to normal, she projects: The unemployment rate could still top 5 percent at the end of next year.

One provision in the economic rescue package working its way through Congress this week will provide an extra $600 a week on top of the unemployment aid that states provide. Another would extend 13 additional weeks of benefits beyond the six months of jobless aid that most states offer.

The new legislation would also extend unemployment benefits, for the first time, to gig workers and others who are not on company payrolls.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.