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U.S. Jobless Rate May Soar to 30%, Fed’s Bullard Says
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoFor context, the highest unemployment rate was during the Great Depression, 24.9%. The methodology likely has changed since then but it's still sobering to think we might soon be in that territory. Hopefully this will be shorter lived and not have a great war as a catalyst for ending.
- epicureanideal 7y agoIt would be nice if they start a Great War Against Disease, and spend as many trillions as needed so no one ever gets the flu, any cold, or any other disease ever again. People keep saying "that's not possible" but there are already a lot of companies working on it. Show me a place I can make $300,000 working on curing diseases and I'd happily spend my life working on it. At the moment making websites pays better.
- comicjk 7y agoThere are a few computational drug discovery companies that might suit you. For example, I work at Schrodinger, whose motto is "Fight Disease With Code." https://www.schrodinger.com/careers https://www.schrodinger.com/careers But you're right that you won't get $300k. Even $200k is a reach. Funding for drug discovery can't match making websites yet.
- gexla 7y agoWith 30% unemployment, making websites might not make much money in the near future.
- naveen99 7y agoA lot of physicians make $300k right now. But it’s a bigger sacrifice with or without the money.
- stubish 7y agoMeaningless jobs will always pay better. If IT jobs in disease eradication paid $300,000, Silicon Valley would be paying $500,000 to keep the bright minds keeping consumerism alive. You have to pay a lot to get people who want to contribute to society to spend their time not contributing to society. cf. Big Tobacco & Oil.
- epicureanideal 7y agoI think it's more that something in the economic system is just mismanaged or broken. If I could take a pill and get an extra year of healthy life, I would pay a lot for that pill. If I could take a pill (or vaccine, or whatever) and never get sick again, I would pay a lot for that pill. If you could make 7.5 billion people never get sick, I assume that would make you far richer than Jeff Bezos. Surely these solutions and others are worth more than a lot of the other things we buy. But our system isn't set up to develop them, it seems. We're set up to pursue quarterly earnings statements, rather than 10 or 20 year goals that would dramatically improve our lives. Also, I'm not sure that our current meaningless software jobs are actually completely meaningless. We are actually making tasks easier and faster, which in some way does contribute to society advancing faster and maybe someday being better able to pursue other goals. Life is significantly different and at least in some ways better thanks to Amazon (get anything anywhere), Google (search everything), Wikipedia (basic knowledge about almost anything), the internet (communicate with anyone), Coursera (learn basic skills on many topics), and so on. And even the simple e-commerce websites for some family business, made by a "web developer" for $500 in 1998, helped push us a little bit toward a more discoverable and efficient economy. Which does help us get a little bit more efficient overall, for goals we might pursue later. Or at least that's how I convince myself to keep doing what I'm doing.
- WarOnPrivacy 7y agoCoincidentally, 24.9% is about what actual unemployment (total 16-64 munus working 16-64) is when unemployment is reported at 3.9%.
- cultus 7y agoIt's absolutely insane that the US isn't even guaranteeing sick leave in all this, let alone a significant portion of lost income. I guarantee you it is cheaper than a depression.
- _bxg1 7y agoOr healthcare. Which that 30% will lose when they lose their jobs. During a pandemic.
- ReptileMan 7y agoThe question is how fast it will come down to full employment once this is over.
- readhn 7y agoyou can estimate the answer by looking at historical data. after last crisis it took 7 years for unemployment rate to recover: https://irle.berkeley.edu/the-post-recession-labor-market-an-incomplete-recovery/ https://irle.berkeley.edu/the-post-recession-labor-market-an... there is more data going back 100 years.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoDenmark (I think) said that they'll freeze the economy, meaning that the state covers everything. Once over, it starts as if nothing happens. People will have no time to look for new jobs, they'll go to old ones and hopefully every company starts spending to support each other
- samsonradu 7y agoSorry but I just can’t see this play out. Consumption will suffer. When foreign tourists stop booking rooms in Copenhagen hotels, how/why keep people on the payroll? Also, isn’t it dangerous to distort the market to such a level? Maybe there are more productive activities for those employees to engage. There will be dislocations of the workforce. Considering the ongoing crisis I would take official statements with a grain of salt also. They need to convince people to comply with the rules.
- Twixes 7y agoThere's no good solution to this crisis. But "pausing" the economy, even at a huge cost, is a better option than letting everything fall apart.
- hakfoo 7y agoIf they're pausing the nonessential economy, I don't see where it stops "I have a biology degree and experience, I'll transition from a paused job into a research team working on Covid-19". What it stops is "I need to perform some trivial make-work job because the hotel/bar/unessential retail I used to work at shut down, and otherwise I starve and get evicted, so I'm going to traipse around and weaken quarentine procedures."
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- smileysteve 7y agoThe restaurants near me have all laid off their staff, closed doors, i suspect they won't pay any outstanding bills; Their rent probably isn't even due yet. I hope that on the reboot we require some "social security" in businesses; healthcare benefits, 2 weeks severance, and retirement savings seem like minimums; Frankly, these requirements should have been included in the 21% tax cut.
- marcofatica 7y agoIf you suspect they won't pay outstanding bills, what makes you think they'll pay severance and health benefits in a downturn?
- lgessler 7y agoI think GP means the government should provide these.
- smileysteve 7y agoand if not, require it as an accounting practice like pensions.
- lonelappde 7y agoWhich are an unmitigated disaster. What happens during inevitable bankruptcy? Social security needs to be administered by society, not business. Tax business if you want.
- hprotagonist 7y agoJanuary 23rd, 2021: President Biden has signed into law the COVID-19 Works Progress Act as the first act of his presidency. It was passed easily in the democratically controlled house and senate the day following his inauguration. Calling for an immediate federal hiring surge at all levels of the newly implemented public health services, President Biden said “This act will restore salaries, dignity, and comprehensive health coverage with sick leave to our nation’s brave citizens who have by no fault of their own been left out to dry during the initial response to the pandemic. Employing many of the currently unemployed to operate our fast turnaround testing clinics and disease screening centers will drive our economy and our continued fight against this disease.”
- phillnom 7y agoWhere has Joe Biden been this past week? Bernie Sanders got people to donate over 2 million dollars for coronavirus charities. Joe Biden hasn't show himself to be presidential during this pandemic in the least.
- nate_meurer 7y agoHe seems to be lying low right now. I'm not sure that's a bad idea. The crisis is young. Anything a politician says at this stage is likely to be proved wrong or at least not entirely right. Biden might not want to utter prescriptions that may be used against him later on.
- lonelappde 7y agoFor better or for worse, he's been winning primaries in the past week. There are 1700 Dem delegates remaining. Sanders needs 1000 to win. Biden needs 700. Sanders isn't going to be President.
- Natsu 7y agoThe sad thing is that you're right--he's focused on winning the nomination. The bad thing is that the fact that he's this useless does not bode well for any of us.
- lordnacho 7y agoHere's something I've been thinking about for a few days. Suppose the government does a massive bailout of everyone. They guarantee jobs, they give everyone money so they don't run out. And it works. In a few months from now, the economy turns out to have just hit a speed bump and everything is back to how it was. What does that say about the economy? I mean if we can stop working and basically just lend ourselves money, and we're fine, what else is fine? Why don't we borrow some money to fix climate change? What about poverty, why would that exist at all? Should we have a reckoning with all the people who said austerity was a good idea?
- tomcam 7y agoIt would all be put on the credit card, like the $23 trillion we owe at the moment. Might be another, let’s say, $4 trillion. The only ways to get out of that number are defaulting on the debts, which would greatly harm pension plans and other countries, or inflate our way out it, which could easily lead to hyperinflation, which would ruin pension plans and the world economy.
- brianwawok 7y agoIt’s too simplistic to call it a credit card. If I spend more than I earn, sure it goes on a credit card. I have to find a way out. If a country that prints money spends more than it makes... it can print more.
- cultus 7y agoThe government can print money, and buy back the debt. Excessive inflation only occurs when the combination of private and public spending is chasing after too few goods. We've been deficit spending like crazy for years and the inflation rate has been too low if anything.
- andrekandre 7y agomaybe something along those lines would be mmt? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory
- vanniv 7y agoIn the depression, the government never outlawed the economy. They never made it illegal to produce goods. The world has never experienced intentional economic dismantling on this broad of a scale. Zimbabwe and Venezuela are the closest the world has ever seen. In only three weeks, America, the richest country in human history, has been reduced to waiting in breadlines and praying that we won't starve to death. Our government is left trying to reassure the population not that there will be prosperity, but that there will be enough calories to prevent starvation.
- md_ 7y agoSorry, but where do you see breadlines?
- vanniv 7y agoI live in California. If you want food, there is a 2 hour wait at the market. You will then be permitted to buy one carton of milk, one 2-pound package of chicken or beef, one loaf of bread, and two canned products -- all from an incredibly limited selection, as that's all the food there is to be had. I spent the entire day yesterday acquiring food by visiting every store in town and waiting in every line. I managed to get enough food to feed us for three days, buying the limit of everything that I was allowed (most markets were so stripped that I could only actually buy one or two items total, because that's all there was). Only one market still had meat of any kind -- I got about a pound of untrimmed tri-tip. None had eggs or milk, but I got a half pound of butter. I did get a loaf of bread, though.
- zebraflask 7y agoThis is clearly a troll post. Mods, please remove.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dang 7y ago
- kdkdk0 7y agoOptimizing for the species survival is more valuable than some whiny landlord demanding rent. Growing up a poor person going to the city was a real trip. Life’s exciting things are very different emotionally when you accept Switzerland isn’t an option. Not having health insurance didn’t stop us from playing with rockets. Words and feelings are not necessarily a connection to reality. Internal anxiety isn’t truth. Western culture seems addicted to the notion the world needs it to spread its gospel across the globe, or life isn’t worth living. Consume in accordance with the demands of high finance! An exceptional nation brought to its knees by the idea iPhone 2021 not being released is a sign of the end times.
- m0zg 7y agoI would like to see the exact, unedited quote if you expect me to believe this. Right now this looks like fake news, like reports of Mnuchin saying "we're gonna have 20% unemployment" the other day, which Mnuchin himself denied. There's simply no way someone in Bullard's (or Mnuchin's) position would say anything as dramatic as the article implies as categorically as the article implies. There is no corroboration that I could find. Everything else references the Bloomberg article, which, in turn, references nothing at all.
- raincom 7y agoBasically, Mnuchin and the Fed gang want more power and much more discretion, so that they can help their cronies. Fed loves to buy ETFs like BoJ does, in order to help banks and the rich, if they are given powers. Democrats should focus more on the fiscal policy than giving more powers to the Federal reserve.
- m0zg 7y agoBe that as it may, my message to the media would be: if you want to retain any remaining shred of credibility you still have, stick to reporting corroborated first hand accounts, not rumors or opinions, at least for a while. Get on the ground, figure out what's going on, report it, in full and with evidence, good and bad. Don't just sit there and suck clickbait out of your thumb like you've been doing for the last decade.
- nkurz 7y agoYes, a unedited quote would be useful. But I did find one corroboration that I think elevates this above "fake news" status. On the St Louis Fed's website, there's a list of James Bullard's media interviews. At the top is this article with the "30%" figure in the title: https://www.stlouisfed.org/from-the-president/media-interviews https://www.stlouisfed.org/from-the-president/media-intervie.... While it's possible that was just an intern who scans the news and adds things, this certainly makes it seem like Bullard officially endorses the 30% number.
- 7y ago