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3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

558 points by treyfitty 7y ago

DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
Wow
jostmey 7y ago
That’s about 1% of the US population to put it in perspective
- hyperbovine 7y ago
  And a far higher percentage of the workforce.
  - adtac 7y ago
    About 1.6-1.8% by most estimates, so not really _far_ higher
    - vikramkr 7y ago
      That's 60 to 80 percent higher. Large differences in small numbers still look small haha
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- markvdb 7y ago
  3.2810^6 people is 1.59% of the 20610^6 US working age population. [0] For comparison, in my native Belgium, 18.38% of the working age population receive temporary jobless allowances due to corona [1]. [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S [1]https://www.tijd.be/politiek-economie/belgie/federaal/overheid-betaalt-helft-van-belgische-beroepsbevolking/10216905.html https://www.tijd.be/politiek-economie/belgie/federaal/overhe... (Sorry, Dutch language source only)
1zael 7y ago
Welcome to the Great Depression of the 21st century.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  Things are bad enough without exaggerating the situation. The big problem with the great depression was not the size of the crash but the duration of the recovery. Our view of the money supply seems a bit more effective these days and it seems unlikely that the recession that comes out of this situation will last as long.
  - PaulRobinson 7y ago
    Like you say, things are bad enough without exaggerating the situation. If you think this is all over in anything less than 4-5 years in terms of economic impact, I don't think you've understood what has really just happened and is about to happen.
    - jeltz 7y ago
      I do not think anyone knows how long the recovery will take, not even the experts.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        There are indicators from past problems, though. One example I've seen is that it took 17 years for airlines to recover after 9/11[0]. -- [0] - https://www.businessinsider.com/airline-stocks-recover-september-11-911-losses-2017-6?IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/airline-stocks-recover-septe...
        asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
        I'm guessing that index does not capture total return. For example, DAL has offered ~2-3% annual dividends at least since 2013, which adds up to a pretty substantial difference to between total return and asset price if reinvested. It's not clear if that's when they resumed dividends or if Yahoo Finance just doesn't have data going back further.
treyfitty 7y ago
For context, the previous record was ~680K in the early 1980s.
- allcentury 7y ago
  Also worth noting the population then was 231 million, of which 110 million was in the labor force. So today: 3 mil / 160 mil - 1.9% 1982: 670k / 110 mil - 0.6%
bearjaws 7y ago
Anecdotal but my company is hiring 2x support and 2x QA, yesterday alone we went from receiving 5-10 applicants a day to 53. I just got into work and there is already 21 from last night.
- castratikron 7y ago
  Just curious, did your company get an essential business exemption from any stay at home orders?
  - bearjaws 7y ago
    We have not, but we can work remote and have had to move our hiring process to be entirely remote.
dubcanada 7y ago
Canada is at 1 million or about 5% of our population. And it's only going to go up from here. I have no idea how they are doing to handle any of this, having that percentage of your population on EI is going to hurt.
- nahname 7y ago
  Have heard similar estimates, found an article corroborating this. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-unemployment-claims-reach-nearly-one-million-as-businesses-battered-by/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-unemploymen...
wpietri 7y ago
And as an econ/business reporter points out, this should be seen as the lower bound on the true number of lost job, because there are a lot of reasons people didn't file, including confusion, overwhelmed systems, and many lost jobs not qualifying: https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1243147516784324608 https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1243147516784324608
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  This is also only the beginning, as lockdowns across the nation aren’t in full swing yet.
  - hrpnk 7y ago
    Do we know the weekly throughput of processing unemployment requests?
    - mcphilip 7y ago
      The rate is hard to determine since it’s per state. There have been many reports of online systems going down and phone queues being insanely long: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/business/coronavirus-unemployment-states.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/business/coronavirus-unem...
  - yulaow 7y ago
    There is usa how the implemented lockdowns work? They forced to shut down all non-essential industries and shops? Or they just suggested it? I am finding confusing information online. Like... Did they really give to the each employer the power to decide if they are essential or not?
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      The authority has been delegated to states, each state is making their own decisions.
est31 7y ago
To make it sure that I understand it correctly: this is not the total number of unemployed people, but the number of people who became unemployed recently and now file the forms? Then that number is gigantic, wow.
- johnpowell 7y ago
  This is the number of people that filed for unemployment in the last week. A staggering number. Just seven days of data.
  - est31 7y ago
    Seven days, that's horrible. Let's hope these people quickly find work again.
    - rabuse 7y ago
      A lot of these filers are in the restaurant/bar industry, and are being "laid off", and told to file, and then will be rehired when the quarantine ceases.
- skrowl 7y ago
  The USA is home to ~340 million people (many people here illegally aren't counted). Only about 63.4% (~215M) of them work. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-parti...
  - qntmfred 7y ago
    Labor force participation rate does not include children, so the 215M number is actually much lower
Dirlewanger 7y ago
"The great American job machine" The whole previous decade needs to come with an asterisk when talking about job growth. Looking at job participation rates and those that have stopped looking completely from BLS paints a completely different story. The pandemic obviously isn't making things better, but it's just always been an afterthought when talking about job growth.
NamTaf 7y ago
3.28 million? Really? With the lockdowns of retail, hospitality, etc. in Australia, a country of 25 million total, we've seen nearly something north of 800,000 unemployed (temporarily or permanently). This can't be an accurate figure, surely!
- jeltz 7y ago
  This is just the people who have filed last week. There is bound to be many more soon. And I am not sure everyone who have lost their jobs are eligible.
  - packet_nerd 7y ago
    My wife and many of her coworkers quite their jobs in the last two weeks as working from home wasn't an option. My understanding is they won't be eligible for unemployment?
    - kasey_junk 7y ago
      Depends on the jurisdiction but in most no, voluntary leaving is not covered.
- nhumrich 7y ago
  Your number actually makes the number sound more reasonable. 800k of 25 million is about 3%. 3 million of US population of 300million is 1%.
- rchaud 7y ago
  > in Australia, a country of 25 million total The US has 13x-15x the population of Australia, so the numbers will be larger. In any case, these are the claims filed in the past week only, and not a cumulative count of the total number who are currently unemployed.
lettergram 7y ago
And this is only the beginning... if you look for projections (or run your own [1]), we will need a hard nationwide shutdown for at least 2-3 months (not 2 weeks) for this to not kill a million plus Americans. I suspect even if a shutdown is lifted, when people start seeing body counts it’s not like they’ll return to traveling or eating out. We’d probably need to see an anti-body test first and/or vaccine. This is going to take years to recover from. [1] https://austingwalters.com/covid-19-vs-the-economy/ https://austingwalters.com/covid-19-vs-the-economy/
- AznHisoka 7y ago
  other countries are also facing this crisis in different stages. So traveling won’t be back to normal for a long time.
- Slartie 7y ago
  Well, the antibody tests are coming in a matter of weeks - multiple approaches have already been developed and they are currently being validated, that is, checked if they trigger reliably on the Coronavirus antibodies and ONLY on those and not similar ones (source: Charité Berlin - the virology lab there is on the forefront of developing Coronavirus tests and assists in validating new antibody tests). They will allow us to make large randomized studies in the population and finally determine the "real" percentage of people who can be considered immune, which is the key element currently missing in all projection models. Having that data, more realistic projections can be made as to how fast the virus will resume to spread if we lift specific restrictions. At the moment, we can only hope for this number to be far larger than expected. But doing such studies takes time, and without their results, lifting any of the restrictions is going to be a dangerous gamble with public health. So I would also suspect for most restrictions to stay in place for about 2 months, and then maybe a slow and gradual opening. First schools, then essential day-to-day businesses, and travel/leisure stuff last. However, antibody tests are not a substitute for a vaccine. Only a broadly available vaccine will give people enough confidence of not contracting the disease for them to start living a normal life again. We can't expect any kind of normality in the economy until this happens, regardless of whether "America (or any other country) is opened for business" again or not - because an open business is worth nothing if the customers stay away.
duxup 7y ago
Semi tangent, about dealing with mass unemployment. I like to think this event changes people's perspective on folks out of work in the US. There's a lot of recrimination, and even self loathing about being poor or out of work in the US. It doesn't seem based in reality and certainly isn't helpful. Perhaps it is time we realize that much like a pandemic things in this world change fast and we need to be able to help folks who are out of work pick up skills quickly / retrain (and maybe retrain employers that people with a 'different' resume might actually be able to do other jobs) so that they can get back on their feet. Maybe it won't be a pandemic but things are changing fast whole industries of people find themselves offshored, jobs change, etc. I think we need to plan for / get comfortable with the idea that on a smaller scale we should be ready to deal with such things dynamically over the course of people's lives with retraining, support for it, and etc. And maybe a workforce with a variety of experiences will be better for it.
- gonzo41 7y ago
  In Australia, they closed all the 'non-essential' industries. Which turns out to be about 30% of the workforce. I keep thinking that big shift will be when people come out of this they won't allow themselves to be 'non-essential' ever again. They won't take back those jobs, they'll push for agreements that guarantee a safety net.
  - duxup 7y ago
    I wonder how many people feel they have the option to not take back a job? I have such options, exercised them a few years ago when I was 'done' with a particular industry and I wanted to change (networking to web dev, I'm so much happier with my work now), but my ability to do so was largely because the job I had done was a pretty good job pay wise (so I could save) / I received a severance, etc. The jobs that are getting shutdown are different / the people I suspect have fewer options.... at least in the US.
    - gonzo41 7y ago
      When I think about the people who won't take back their jobs, I think about the business owners mostly. Australians love cafe culture and 6 months ago, if you opened a cafe in the Sydney CBD and if you could make good fast coffee, you'd have a great trade with good revenue to match. But now, those small business owners are going to lose business and homes. And a lot of workers may come back, but they won't stay. It's really really bad because we don't have a lot of industries that have openings that can just absorb new hires. Industry doesn't train up people any more, maybe that trend will revert but I really worry for a bubble of people in my community that may loose out and never get a strong footing back.
PaulRobinson 7y ago
A staggering number, and unprecedented in the modern era. I'm not in the US or an America, but my (retired), Father is and for the sake of the people around him and his family I hope this is the point where the American political system - and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead. In the UK we saw an Old-Etonian Tory Prime Minister in the space of a couple of weeks: - Effectively nationalise a huge chunk of private industry by offering to subsidise 80% of all salaries up to £30k/year - Delay tax payments for businesses, and offer up to 15% of GDP in loans and grants to help keep them alive - Renationalise the train industry (privatising it and others was a hallmark of Thatcher's period in power) - Accept that their planned immigration policy post-Brexit is now probably dead in the water because who knew that "low skilled workers" like cleaners and agricultural workers would be useful? - Severely curtail free movement and enterprise by shutting every pub, restaurant, cinema, theatre and cafe across the UK as well as almost every shop that isn't a pharmacy or food shop - Become champion supporters of an NHS they were - until recently - trying to sell bit off of Politics here has changed forever, and likely for the better (assuming the sanctions on free movement and enterprise are temporary and not a back door for more draconian measures). For the sake of the most vulnerable in America, I hope it's the same there too. And maybe - just maybe - it's time everybody took another look at the UBI debate, again.
- shripadk 7y ago
  > And maybe - just maybe - it's time everybody took another look at the UBI debate, again. Doesn't UBI directly result in inflation and cause currency devaluation? If the money that you hold loses its value (because everyone has at the very least the same amount of money as a basic, consistent income) then it is worth nothing in the end. It is as good as having no money in my humble opinion. Money has to be valuable for it to be useful in trade. Giving away money to everyone devalues the currency.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    You would have to implement it in a way that redistributed wealth, i.e. increase marginal tax rates. The goal is to make sure everyone is housed, fed, and educated. One option is to just give them housing, food, and education. Another is to give people money and let them choose. Yet another is to loan the money and to put them in debt forever.
stupandaus 7y ago
A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] 4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment since they were not covered prior to the passing of the senate bill last night. This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA
- claudeganon 7y ago
  > This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel. I think we need to couple the two events a little more closely. The 2008 Financial Crisis accelerated inequality, political instability, asset inflation, and the rise of precarious work to such a degree that the damage of this hit is being greatly compounded. To my mind, the hole that was the 2008 crisis was papered over and someone just came by and dropped a brick on it.
  - TheNorthman 7y ago
    The former Minister of Finance in greece and current MP Yanis Varoufakis has made the same connection [0]. He argues that it's the same crisis, but that the crisis has transformed, so that the solution can't be the same as in 2008. E.g. the ability of China to offer massive renminbi-swaps is set into question because they are being hit hard by this crisis. The weren't hit during 2008. He also questions whether the US will be willing to offer the same condition-less USD-swaps. [0]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OLfHpvJKNg0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=OLfHpvJKNg0 is an interview where he explains his position.
  - malandrew 7y ago
    > the rise of precarious work I'm not going to disagree that there was a rise in precarious work, but I think many people don't realize how valuable having this work as option is. Brazil has been economically struggling for almost a decade now, which is the same decade when this type of work appeared. For many people in Brazil this has been a godsend. It's provided an employment option where previously there would have been none. The option wasn't between precarious work and non-precarious work. It was between precarious work and no work. Precarious work at least lets workers get back on the work ladder and just being on the ladder makes it easier to grab the next rung on the ladder and pull themselves up. It's especially valuable that the precarious work also tends to be flexible. This lets people study for new skills and go to interviews, which is something much harder to do with scheduled work. The economic situation in Brazil would have been far worse if another million or more people doing this precarious work had been unemployed for the last decade instead.
cjslep 7y ago
I grew up with the puritanical mindset of: "Your intrinsic worth as a human is the money you earn; because the money you earn is from how hard you work; and how hard you work is a reflection of your intrinsic Virtue." Thus I grew up in a family that loathes the unemployed. I really hope -- though I have grave doubts -- that this event gets through to them, so that they can have some personal growth, too.
- Kaze404 7y ago
  That is the saddest thing I've ever read on this site. I know there's people who believe that but it's still shocking to me.
  - wmeredith 7y ago
    "Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think." -Ayn Rand I was also raised in a family like this.
  - itronitron 7y ago
    This is the view among most Americans, reinforced by the word 'un'employed which suggests that the default condition is for someone to be employed.
    - rodiger 7y ago
      Perhaps not the default but it is the norm. Regardless of semantics we should be pushing UBI for exactly these instances.
- mrfusion 7y ago
  Sadly everyone seems to be doubling down on their existing strong opinions. (Any ideas to improve that?)
  - loopz 7y ago
    People learn through hardship. We haven't experienced hardship yet.
rubber_duck 7y ago
And this is just the start. While I think the US response to Corona was slower than the response in my country I feel the US is the only country that's seriously discussing economic repercussions and debating the medical experts. In EU (at least in my country) it's doctors running things and we are in "stop the pandemic at all cost". Everyone is in panic due to Italy situation. But doctors are only trained to see the medical side of the picture - and there is a point at which this approach to fighting the virus is going to have worse consequences than a full blown pandemic itself - I don't see anyone publicly discussing this point around here.
- sundaeofshock 7y ago
  Seriously? There were a number of submissions yesterday to HN discussing the relative merits of sacrificing millions for the sake of the market. Perhaps you missed those?
  - scottLobster 7y ago
    Not sure if this was your intent, but "sacrificing millions for the sake of the Market" sounds like you're trying to shift away from the point that right now about 3.28 million more folks (probably more) are wondering how to pay their rent/mortgages and feed their children. If this lockdown continues indefinitely the death numbers from the economic fallout will likely eclipse those of the pandemic. But nah, the "market" apparently entirely consists of assholes on Wall Street playing Capitalism II and lobbying governments for payouts. No way it has any real impact!
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - pjc50 7y ago
      This is where it's very important to distinguish between financial conditions and material conditions. Feeding children and supplying respirators and masks are material conditions, dependent on the production and distribution systems. Paying rent and mortgage, on the other hand, isn't material. If you don't pay it nothing material changes - it's not an iron law of the world in the way that hunger is, evictions are a choice. Admittedly it transfers the problem to someone else, but if the solution to maintaining everyone fed includes them then they're not going to go hungry. Financial conditions also have a time tradeoff. Reducing retirement funds affects material conditions in the future. Or the date at which people are able to retire. If you had a button you could press which let you retire immediately, but (with probability P) took the life of some random person in the world, would you press it? With what value of P?
yurlungur 7y ago
The thing about the current situation is that there is still no end in sight and it feels like we are just at the beginning stages of a tough struggle. Thankfully tech seems to be holding up in terms of employment for the moment, but we have stopped hiring as well so who knows what may come next. Not every tech can withstand or even benefit from the current crisis.
scottLobster 7y ago
Won't know for sure until Apr 03 (The Day BLS releases the official unemployment rate for March) but this may very well trip the Sahm recession indicator, which has correctly predicted/detected every US recession back to 1950 (If it's been further backfitted I can't find the data). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMCURRENT https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMCURRENT
- yread 7y ago
  I don't think you need a black magic/AI/fancy algorithm to tell whether there is a recession or not
  - scottLobster 7y ago
    No, but it's nice to have some confirmation :)
donquichotte 7y ago
The economical impact of COVID-19 on people's lives will be far more severe than the biological one. Hopefully this won't discourage governments from taking appropriate action once a more lethal pandemic comes.
- johnpowell 7y ago
  So lets say that there are a couple hundred thousand dead and you are pretty sure that 50% of the people out there have it. Are you going to go out for dinner or a movie? Not me.. But ignore me if you aren't saying that the restrictions should be reversed so the economy goes back to normal. A guy on CNBC just said that even if it means 400K would die. The economy just will not go back to normal anytime soon.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
big_chungus 7y ago
For this not to bankrupt the nation and retard our growth for the next twenty-five years, we need to all go back to work, today. Even if coronavirus kills a million people, the rest will probably be fine in the long term. If we shut down the economy, three hundred million will be affected. This "flattening the curve" business is clearly not worth it. You cannot shut the economy. There is only so much we can borrow. The fed is buying debt right and left, and the government surely doesn't want to borrow money and remove that liquidity. So, the fed will buy t-bills instead and probably have to inflate the currency to pay for it all. We could end up spending orders of magnitude than 2 trillion on more hand-outs, so we could end up with another period of stagflation. Unless we want to retard our growth and prosperity for the next 25 years, we all have to go back, consequences aside. Vulnerable people need to stay home for months until this blows over; it's not the responsibility of the rest of us to lose our jobs for the sake of a few others. Doctors say we have to stay home, but as doctors, they naturally want to prioritize health. As the saying goes, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Like many other problems, there are diminishing returns as we approach either extreme of opening the economy or shutting it down. This extreme clearly isn't working. The at-risk million stay home; everyone else goes to work.
- Kaze404 7y ago
  One thing I don't understand about this line of thinking is how do you expect sick people from working? Sure, not everyone will die but a significant portion of the population will get infected and need at the very least to stay home for a week or two. How is that situation better than where we're at now?
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    3.28 million people are already out of work, likely a good deal more than that. One million are most at risk. There won't be zero impact, but that's less than a third, right out of the gate. Long-term we'll see significant increases in unemployment on the "shut-it-down" path. To clarify based on your reply to this comment, my point was that we've already seen more people out of work than the estimated worst-case 1.2 million death toll. This is the first data point, and we'll see more huge increases as we gather more. You mentioned that sick people won't work, but we're already seeing what is possibly more unemployment than we'd have with people sick. 1.2 million < 3.28 million. While some people may not work in the short term, this "flattening the curve" business prolongs that time greatly. We'd all be back much sooner if we just ripped off the band-aid and got it over with. EDIT: Replying to circumvent123 here, as HN is rate-limiting. Yes, death is worse than unemployment, but for how many? Death for one vs unemployment for everyone, which would you pick? If so, is this simply a question of the ratio of the two? Regardless, that's not the choice of bureaucrats to make. At-risk populations are responsible for staying home and keeping themselves safe.
pupdogg 7y ago
As you look at this story, please keep some basic numbers in mind: 1. US Population: 329,433,166 (as of 3/25/2020) 2. Employed: 158,130,000 (approx. 48% of population) 3. Unemployed: 8,787,000 (approx. 5.6% of employed) Note: Take these numbers with a grain of salt as US Population is only as good as the Census Reporting itself. The Employed # is an estimate based on 155.76 million factually employed in 2018 and does not include self-employed, contractors, gig workers etc. Sources: 1. https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://www.census.gov/popclock/ 2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the... 3. https://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/us/ https://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/us/
max93 7y ago
The stock rises after the announcement...
- quickthrowman 7y ago
  Yes, a higher unemployment number was expected. Did you think unemployment going way up wasn’t already partially priced in?
ian0 7y ago
How is our social system so fragile? I mean seriously - thousands of years and wireless comms and rockets to the moon and not only do we forget to prepare for a virus (something that had happened routinely throughout our history) but when it hits and people have to stay at home for a few weeks the economy falls down and leaves millions of people who want to work unable to do so.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Rare catastrophes are hard to prepare for, because the cost of preparation is expensive. "Routinely happening" once a century or two isn't an easy target.
  - minikites 7y ago
    It's a perfectly achievable target, we just have one political party that prioritizes private corporate profits and the interests of very wealthy citizens above all other societal needs.
    - spritecranberry 7y ago
      Really, your solution to this is "Republicans bad"? The Democrats are far from perfect. I'm not happier than the next guy about the bail-outs of companies, but you're saying it's okay to dispense colossal hand-outs to everyone? The government cannot solve this problem. It's not the government's job. Bad things happen; go back to life.
    - yotossing 7y ago
      > one political party 2
    - lol2143651 7y ago
      Cringe
- abyssin 7y ago
  Don't even start to think about climate change, a phenomenon we're completely aware is happening, but still do nothing about, despite consequences that will be worse than this virus.
testing_vpn 7y ago
Heya, can you do everyone a favour and go fuck yourself? Much appreciated, thanks :)
mrfusion 7y ago
What is the process for freelancers to get unemployment? I think that was mentioned in the new stimulus?
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Some info: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/can-i-collect-unemployment-if-i-m-self-employed-2064148 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/can-i-collect-unemployment...
- mempko 7y ago
  Yes, you can thank Bernie Sanders for that.
hopfog 7y ago
Just to illustrate how absurd this number is: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUCTISVXQAcIKEb?format=png&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUCTISVXQAcIKEb?format=png&name=...
- trackone 7y ago
  This is messing up charts so much that maybe in a couple years we will be removing 2020 from the data just to have a chart that doesn't have a crazy x-axis.
  - b3kart 7y ago
    2020: the Shetland Islands of unemployment charts. (For context: https://bit.ly/2UEV5H5 https://bit.ly/2UEV5H5)
- dwaltrip 7y ago
  Holy shit... That is absolutely nuts. And to think it will likely get worse.
poidos 7y ago
Most, if not all (?) will lose their healthcare. Horrible situation to be in during a pandemic.
csomar 7y ago
> A week ago, he said he had “a good middle-class job” which paid him $35.50 an hour plus health care and retirement benefits. Now he is struggling to figure out how he’ll pay a $300 electric bill and $1,000 in rent for his townhouse. He also lost his health insurance. You make $35.5/hour in (I suppose?) a stable job but if the work stops for a week, you struggle with a $300 bill? I know some people are living paycheck to paycheck but starting from a certain income you should build a safety net. What about your IRA? What about your credit score? What about small investments? Looks like some people are living $ to $ without leaving any money aside. This might be what is going to make this even harder for the economy.
- big_chungus 7y ago
  This is exactly right. The economy has grown to unsustainable levels based on the economic habits of the average American who can't be bothered to save, hence the crash we're seeing now. At sixty hours a week, that guy should be making six figures, pre-tax. There is zero excuse for not saving. Everyone should save at least six months of salary for emergencies; though a few people legitimately can't, most Americans simply don't bother because they'd rather spend that money on the new i phone. Edit: Williamdclt, I'll answer your question here due to rate-limiting. Yes, lots of us do; I've been working that way since internships in high school. Same with many others I know. Usually, though, it's close to 12 hours a day and none on Saturday, or maybe 11 a day and a little on the weekend. Not an issue so long as you plan about an hour a day for something fun and mindless, and leave weekends free to do chores/relax. Edit: Consz, responding here due to rate-limiting. Not all of us live in the same world. I'm glad to hear you and your friends are doing well, but that's not representative of everyone. I do because I'm currently hourly, and that's true of many of the people I mentioned. When every additional hour worked has more money associated with it, most people will work more; that's not silly. The downside is, of course, there's a distinct opportunity cost to taking time off, so I don't do so much of that.
  - minikites 7y ago
    Wages have stagnated since the 1970s: https://i.stack.imgur.com/m7EXP.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/m7EXP.jpg
KoftaBob 7y ago
Isn't it meaningful that the cause of this particular unemployment is very unique, in that it wasn't caused by a weak economy, but by the government artificially closing the businesses temporarily? Theoretically, once everything starts to open back up, won't there be a similarly sized surge in "new jobs" so to speak?
throwaway_USD 7y ago
Everyone should expect the stock market to thrive off this data today...
- treyfitty 7y ago
  Why’s that? I see that the SP500 is rising... but why is this “good news” for businesses?
  - throwaway_USD 7y ago
    The danger was businesses losing customers (revenue/income), which these initial numbers confirm...but on the other hand these jobless folks (and the whole country)just took out a $6T loan, of which $5.75T is going to these businesses ($1.75 will not have to be paid back and $4T will be interest free loans, and likely in may cases these companies will actually have negative interest rates, in other words they will make money on borrowing these tax payer loans). These are the very same companies that will also avoid paying US taxes. Public companies cut all their costs/expenses and are going to be given $5.75T...mainstreet can't buy on these lows (because they have no jobs/income, fear and lack of liquidity are a bad combination) and the companies are flush with cash to buy back stocks now before they get the real windfall from tax payers. In short, public companies will be spending today to buy their own stock.
    - treyfitty 7y ago
      But it's been confirmed that stock buybacks will not be allowed for companies receiving a bailout. Am I missing something more here? https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-stimulus-package-set-to-ban-stock-buybacks-for-companies-that-get-aid-2020-03-25 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-stimulus-packa...
      - throwaway_USD 7y ago
        >Am I missing something more here? Apparently...they are doing the buy backs now (like right now) while they are flush with cash/no expenses, main street can't invest, and before they get their bailout cash. Never mind the buy back prohibitions are being majorly overstated.
mensetmanusman 7y ago
A year from now, will we look back and say it was worth the suffering for something 5x as bad as the flu? (based on Germany’s numbers, which are more fully accounting for those with mild symptoms) Shows how important testing randomly is, if the denominator is low because you are only testing those in the hospital, it looks like the second coming of the Spanish flu.
- matwood 7y ago
  Even if we raise the denominator to make the percentages look better, there is no denying that hospitals are being overwhelmed. The flu often already pushed hospitals to the edge, so even only (heh) 5x worse will cause most hospital systems collapse.
  - mensetmanusman 7y ago
    Should 1000 people go unemployed to save one person?
    - cbruns 7y ago
      Phrased differently, are you willing to die to give employment to 1000 people?
      - mensetmanusman 7y ago
        Phrased differently, I would be willing to die to give employment to 1000 people who can work to save 10 (?) people. If people aren’t working to care for the system, then doctors can’t find helpers with their kids, etc. The system collapses in this scenario as well. I don’t have a real answer, but this event is helping discuss interesting and difficult questions. If I was over 70 y.o., I would think that I would be willing to die to prevent my grandchildren from experiencing the great depression.
    - gnulinux 7y ago
      Obviously right? Clearly temporary unemployment of any number of people seems less important than death of thousands, if not millions of people.
kingkawn 7y ago
At least in New York the state dept of labor unemployment page is broken under the server stress and untold numbers of people haven’t been able to login and file claims.
fallingfrog 7y ago
Things that Coronavirus is teaching us: -the people who are actually vital to make the economy are grocery clerks, doctors, nurses, teachers and other carers, but not corporate CEOs, who are ultimately just dead weight. -money is imaginary and they can print as much as they want. -the people in power right now would rather have the stock market crash and watch you and a million other Americans die than give healthcare to everyone, even in the middle of a pandemic. How much would it help to have a centralized, organized response where everyone gets tested early right now? But it’s impossible, because it would mean giving health care to poor people. -capitalism is a beast that dies if it cannot grow. People work mostly to pay rent and debts. They pay rent so the landlord can pay the mortgage. The bank has already lent out the money they expect to get from people paying the mortgage- so if property owners don’t pay their monthly bill, the whole financial system has a heart attack. Same thing with corporate debt. The corporation is assuming that you’re going to buy crap you don’t need. If you don’t, then they can’t pay their massive debts and again the whole system seizes up. So the primary reason we spend all our useful hours at work is so that we can make numbers bigger at the bank. And all of these debts, ultimately, are paid off on the backs of the working class. But the whole system can’t be reduced, or paused, or even slowed down- it must grow exponentially more and more, consuming more and more resources forever, or else it craters in a devastating crash and cannibalizes itself on the way down.
- smileysteve 7y ago
  There are 2 policy options I see moving forward: Public: Healthcare and Unemployment (possibly sick leave) Private: Forced GAAP accounting for 2-4 weeks of sick leave for all employees (including gig contractors) These would be paramount to national security; so could potentially receive backing loans or even the defense budget.
- rchaud 7y ago
  I'm not sure if the lessons will be interpreted in this way, or even remembered once things go back to some form of normalcy, at least for the monied classes that hold the largest microphones in our society. The lessons learned from the conflict in Vietnam was not that "war is a racket" or "the US shouldn't militarily intervene unless it's a last resort". It was simply that "the US should use proxies where possible and only intervene where the opposition has a limited capacity to fight back". And even then, they've greatly overestimated their strength in these conflicts. Because the people with the largest microphones said it would be enough to win.
helen___keller 7y ago
My biggest concern is that we aren't working on the infrastructure and cultural shift that is going to be needed to have a return to normal. The endgame of covid-19 is herd immunity, which requires either 30-60% of the population infected and recovered, or it requires a vaccine. Realistically both are probably 9+ months out: vaccines are slow to develop, and almost every governor has proven they'd rather shut down everything than see hospitals be overloaded. In other words, for the next 6-12 months we have two choices: (a) Public life sees a boom-bust pattern of sickness, where we open things back up, then a new outbreak of infection happens, and everything shuts down again for 2-6 weeks. (b) We aggressively fight off our initial outbreak, then build infrastructure to quickly identify and contain all infections. We gently reopen life back to a kind-of-normal states of permanent semi-quarantine until a vaccine arrives. In my opinion, (b) is clearly the optimal approach. And yet we haven't even begun working on the infrastructural and cultural changes needed to support pre-herd-immunity public life. We need mass production of face masks and a culture where it is unacceptable to not wear a face mask in public, particularly crowded locations and public transit. We need every building, every bus and train, every tourist attraction, testing every visitor with a contactless thermometer. If you have a fever you get a covid-19 test. To support allowing non-remote-capable work to resume, any jobs that are remote capable should remain remote until we have herd immunity. More people leaving their homes means higher risk of an outbreak, and when an outbreak happens non-remote-capable employees are the ones screwed over. As much as I distrust the CCP and China's official numbers, it just takes one glance on the measures being taken in China to prove that China is a thousand times more serious about containing this virus than we are, and that's going to play in their favor in getting things back to normal. Here's an eye-opening video on some of the steps Nanjing has taken to prevent an outbreak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM&feature=youtu.be The simple fact is we're lacking the national leadership to make an effective response to this disease.
- bin0 7y ago
  Cultural changes? How would you build those? The government doesn't control the culture. How would you make it unacceptable? Bureaucrats don't have direct control over that. Also, a bunch of "we need"s about the ideal situation don't do much. The reason the China contained it is because she is an authoritarian state. While that provides certain advantages in this situation, it comes with certain drawbacks: not being able to access many websites, inability to express your political opinion, inability to own a firearm, being tossed in a concentration camp if the government doesn't like you. This isn't a question of leadership, you're asking the government to do things it literally has no power to do, things entirely outside of the constitution.
dpcan 7y ago
Being a sole proprietor / contractor right now feels hopeless. Nobody is spending money with me right now, projects on hold, no possible way of filing for unemployment. It's worrisome. Thankfully my wife is still working - but she's an administrator at a Nursing Home and people there are starting to get tested - and she's panicking. They are days from having no nurses. She's worried about cleaning crews being sick. She's worried about bringing it home. Luckily they have a stockpile of supplies, BUT THIS WHOLE THING IS ABOUT TO BLOW UP! The problem is that the tests of their employees are taking UP TO 10 DAYS to come back. They are sending home nurses for this long just to wait and see if they are all going to be exposed, their residents too. Anyone in their facility who may be sick is being sent home for 14 days. There will be nobody left to take care of the elderly, who may also get sick. People are worried about dying themselves, or the people they care for dying. I'm confident we are 10 days from hearing about Nursing Homes and Nurses in Nursing Homes everywhere getting sick and dying in massive numbers.
- cheeze 7y ago
  > Being a sole proprietor / contractor right now feels hopeless. Nobody is spending money with me right now, projects on hold, no possible way of filing for unemployment. It's worrisome. Please don't take this as me being captain hindsight here, but I think that this pandemic has reallllly shown the need for an emergency fund. IMO if you're sole prop or contractor, you owe it to yourself to have a bigger emergency fund for this exact scenario.
  - manquer 7y ago
    It is not that people don’t know this and spend all they make. Not all contractors make enough to save for an emergency fund easily. Independent of all of this, every experienced contractor knows that sometimes there will be dull patches and you save for that . However it is not always possible to do so, and you may have saved for 2weeks or 2 months and it may not be enough the economy might limp for 6months or a year .
  - GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
    perhaps having better social safety nets like 90% of the developed world would be better, no?
mr_isomies 7y ago
Underpinning this (and similar announcements in other western economies) is the fact that in the last 4 to 8 years, most of the "new jobs" created have in fact been part-time. Just like for the number of covid infected vs detected, this might very be the tip of the iceberg.
rsweeney21 7y ago
The US federal and state governments have implemented policies that have forced a large number of businesses to close temporarily. A business that is closed can't pay it's employees, so naturally it would have to lay them off. If tomorrow we found a cure and got the all clear to return to life as normal, how many of the 3.28M would be re-hired immediately? What we need is a distinction between being laid off temporarily and being laid off permanently. That would give us a clearer picture of the real economic impact. We need a new metric. The senate stimulus bill should have included a new classification and support for workers temporarily put on unpaid leave.
biolurker1 7y ago
Stock market up, Trump says churches will be full of people in two weeks. I'm watching a movie it seems
wayne_skylar 7y ago
More than anything right now people are going to have a very strong appetite for financial security. It's about time we reconsider 'working for 50 weeks to pay for 52' as a viable means to have that security.
fallingfrog 7y ago
Now, try to imagine how we’re going to de-grow the economy to deal with climate change without some form of de facto communism. I never would have said this a month ago but I think there’s no other way the future can go.
tmpynews 7y ago
Someone can correct me on this if I am wrong. Most of the unemployment is people on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of financials. Most of them are in the service sector. The middle of the pack group did not suffer because of this (yet). Whenever this clears the service sector, travel, restaurants, hospitality etc will bounce back very quickly. So all the people that lost their jobs could just get them back and the recovery will be sharp. However, the kick in the nuts will be if the virus drags on for months. Then it becomes uncertain.
MisterBastahrd 7y ago
For those playing at home, that's 3.28 million people who probably don't have access to health care now. Many probably didn't before due to the nature of their jobs, but it's going to be interesting to watch the cry for bailout of hospitals from the same politicians who are completely fine otherwise with people going without healthcare.
abootstrapper 7y ago
And the stock market loves it? I’m so confused.
- 01100011 7y ago
  It may be a temporary bump. I'm still debating pulling some money out of the market for a while. I'd still be buying via my 401(k), so I'm not totally out, but I just feel like the fundamentals will pull the market down for a while. Then again, we will probably, finally, start to see (stag|in)flation soon so having cash may be a bad move.
rukittenme 7y ago
My initial response to this is... duh. How many governments have ordered people not to work. Is it surprising that all those people would then file for not working benefits? Of course not. Its an artificial unemployment spike (provoked by very real, fundamental forces in the world i.e. covid-19). It will be VERY interesting to watch how state governments react to this spike. The federal government has monopoly money but state governments are VERY MUCH concerned with debt levels. We'll see how long these isolation orders last. States will have to chose between unemployment, pensions, welfare programs, transit operations, etc. I wonder who gets the axe first. You could very easily see states go bankrupt and whole classes of the social safety net depleted for a generation.
stillbourne 7y ago
You know how to fix the problem with those record layoffs though right? First cut all funding to social safety net programs and use that money to give tax cuts to the rich, who then don't even pretend that trickle down economics works and instead set up a fund for the public to donate to help those who need relief because fuck you I got mine.
adriancooney 7y ago
I wonder would a vaccine be able to reverse this instantly? Can you imagine. It's going to be a bumpy few months.
neonate 7y ago
https://archive.md/6BC8F https://archive.md/6BC8F
peterwwillis 7y ago
Reminder: we spend 700 Billion on our military. No reason that can't be reduced to provide aid if needed.
Daniel_sk 7y ago
And yet - S&P 500 reacts with a sharp climb and most investors already think we hit the bottom two days ago.
AtlasBarfed 7y ago
If the US was smart (big if...) The pandemic quarantine will accumulate pent up demand, or at least a desire to consume once it is "over". A good economic recovery would provide enough money to fund this demand and immediately reward rehiring of people to previous levels. But this will be a series of discredited supply-side measures until (perhaps) a Keynesian friendly democrat is in office.
- treyfitty 7y ago
  Pent up demand for what? I’m being half facetious here, but something of this magnitude and rare will likely cause a shift in our world-views. This whole talk of “pent up demand” in Econ 101 really leads me to believe this system is guided by shibboleths and buzz phrases. Let’s be real for a second: this pandemic will fundamentally change consumption as we recalibrate just how much we “need” that new shiny thing.
justlexi93 7y ago
Recession will take place in every country next year so expect that the number of jobless people will strike up during and after the pandemic.
anthony_barker 7y ago
Canada wins 500,000 jobs lost at 10% of the population. Oil and gas prices is a double whammy.

558 points by treyfitty 7y ago

DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago

Wow

jostmey 7y ago

That’s about 1% of the US population to put it in perspective

hyperbovine 7y ago
And a far higher percentage of the workforce.
- adtac 7y ago
  About 1.6-1.8% by most estimates, so not really _far_ higher
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    That's 60 to 80 percent higher. Large differences in small numbers still look small haha
deleted 7y ago
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markvdb 7y ago
3.2810^6 people is 1.59% of the 20610^6 US working age population. [0] For comparison, in my native Belgium, 18.38% of the working age population receive temporary jobless allowances due to corona [1]. [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S [1]https://www.tijd.be/politiek-economie/belgie/federaal/overheid-betaalt-helft-van-belgische-beroepsbevolking/10216905.html https://www.tijd.be/politiek-economie/belgie/federaal/overhe... (Sorry, Dutch language source only)

1zael 7y ago

Welcome to the Great Depression of the 21st century.

deleted 7y ago
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asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
Things are bad enough without exaggerating the situation. The big problem with the great depression was not the size of the crash but the duration of the recovery. Our view of the money supply seems a bit more effective these days and it seems unlikely that the recession that comes out of this situation will last as long.
- PaulRobinson 7y ago
  Like you say, things are bad enough without exaggerating the situation. If you think this is all over in anything less than 4-5 years in terms of economic impact, I don't think you've understood what has really just happened and is about to happen.
  - jeltz 7y ago
    I do not think anyone knows how long the recovery will take, not even the experts.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      There are indicators from past problems, though. One example I've seen is that it took 17 years for airlines to recover after 9/11[0]. -- [0] - https://www.businessinsider.com/airline-stocks-recover-september-11-911-losses-2017-6?IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/airline-stocks-recover-septe...
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
        I'm guessing that index does not capture total return. For example, DAL has offered ~2-3% annual dividends at least since 2013, which adds up to a pretty substantial difference to between total return and asset price if reinvested. It's not clear if that's when they resumed dividends or if Yahoo Finance just doesn't have data going back further.

treyfitty 7y ago

For context, the previous record was ~680K in the early 1980s.

allcentury 7y ago
Also worth noting the population then was 231 million, of which 110 million was in the labor force. So today: 3 mil / 160 mil - 1.9% 1982: 670k / 110 mil - 0.6%

bearjaws 7y ago

Anecdotal but my company is hiring 2x support and 2x QA, yesterday alone we went from receiving 5-10 applicants a day to 53. I just got into work and there is already 21 from last night.

castratikron 7y ago
Just curious, did your company get an essential business exemption from any stay at home orders?
- bearjaws 7y ago
  We have not, but we can work remote and have had to move our hiring process to be entirely remote.

dubcanada 7y ago

Canada is at 1 million or about 5% of our population. And it's only going to go up from here. I have no idea how they are doing to handle any of this, having that percentage of your population on EI is going to hurt.

nahname 7y ago
Have heard similar estimates, found an article corroborating this. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-unemployment-claims-reach-nearly-one-million-as-businesses-battered-by/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-unemploymen...

wpietri 7y ago

And as an econ/business reporter points out, this should be seen as the lower bound on the true number of lost job, because there are a lot of reasons people didn't file, including confusion, overwhelmed systems, and many lost jobs not qualifying: https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1243147516784324608 https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1243147516784324608

toomuchtodo 7y ago
This is also only the beginning, as lockdowns across the nation aren’t in full swing yet.
- hrpnk 7y ago
  Do we know the weekly throughput of processing unemployment requests?
  - mcphilip 7y ago
    The rate is hard to determine since it’s per state. There have been many reports of online systems going down and phone queues being insanely long: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/business/coronavirus-unemployment-states.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/business/coronavirus-unem...
- yulaow 7y ago
  There is usa how the implemented lockdowns work? They forced to shut down all non-essential industries and shops? Or they just suggested it? I am finding confusing information online. Like... Did they really give to the each employer the power to decide if they are essential or not?
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    The authority has been delegated to states, each state is making their own decisions.

est31 7y ago

To make it sure that I understand it correctly: this is not the total number of unemployed people, but the number of people who became unemployed recently and now file the forms? Then that number is gigantic, wow.

johnpowell 7y ago
This is the number of people that filed for unemployment in the last week. A staggering number. Just seven days of data.
- est31 7y ago
  Seven days, that's horrible. Let's hope these people quickly find work again.
  - rabuse 7y ago
    A lot of these filers are in the restaurant/bar industry, and are being "laid off", and told to file, and then will be rehired when the quarantine ceases.
skrowl 7y ago
The USA is home to ~340 million people (many people here illegally aren't counted). Only about 63.4% (~215M) of them work. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-parti...
- qntmfred 7y ago
  Labor force participation rate does not include children, so the 215M number is actually much lower

Dirlewanger 7y ago

"The great American job machine" The whole previous decade needs to come with an asterisk when talking about job growth. Looking at job participation rates and those that have stopped looking completely from BLS paints a completely different story. The pandemic obviously isn't making things better, but it's just always been an afterthought when talking about job growth.

NamTaf 7y ago

3.28 million? Really? With the lockdowns of retail, hospitality, etc. in Australia, a country of 25 million total, we've seen nearly something north of 800,000 unemployed (temporarily or permanently). This can't be an accurate figure, surely!

jeltz 7y ago
This is just the people who have filed last week. There is bound to be many more soon. And I am not sure everyone who have lost their jobs are eligible.
- packet_nerd 7y ago
  My wife and many of her coworkers quite their jobs in the last two weeks as working from home wasn't an option. My understanding is they won't be eligible for unemployment?
  - kasey_junk 7y ago
    Depends on the jurisdiction but in most no, voluntary leaving is not covered.
nhumrich 7y ago
Your number actually makes the number sound more reasonable. 800k of 25 million is about 3%. 3 million of US population of 300million is 1%.
rchaud 7y ago
> in Australia, a country of 25 million total The US has 13x-15x the population of Australia, so the numbers will be larger. In any case, these are the claims filed in the past week only, and not a cumulative count of the total number who are currently unemployed.

lettergram 7y ago

And this is only the beginning... if you look for projections (or run your own [1]), we will need a hard nationwide shutdown for at least 2-3 months (not 2 weeks) for this to not kill a million plus Americans. I suspect even if a shutdown is lifted, when people start seeing body counts it’s not like they’ll return to traveling or eating out. We’d probably need to see an anti-body test first and/or vaccine. This is going to take years to recover from. [1] https://austingwalters.com/covid-19-vs-the-economy/ https://austingwalters.com/covid-19-vs-the-economy/

AznHisoka 7y ago
other countries are also facing this crisis in different stages. So traveling won’t be back to normal for a long time.
Slartie 7y ago
Well, the antibody tests are coming in a matter of weeks - multiple approaches have already been developed and they are currently being validated, that is, checked if they trigger reliably on the Coronavirus antibodies and ONLY on those and not similar ones (source: Charité Berlin - the virology lab there is on the forefront of developing Coronavirus tests and assists in validating new antibody tests). They will allow us to make large randomized studies in the population and finally determine the "real" percentage of people who can be considered immune, which is the key element currently missing in all projection models. Having that data, more realistic projections can be made as to how fast the virus will resume to spread if we lift specific restrictions. At the moment, we can only hope for this number to be far larger than expected. But doing such studies takes time, and without their results, lifting any of the restrictions is going to be a dangerous gamble with public health. So I would also suspect for most restrictions to stay in place for about 2 months, and then maybe a slow and gradual opening. First schools, then essential day-to-day businesses, and travel/leisure stuff last. However, antibody tests are not a substitute for a vaccine. Only a broadly available vaccine will give people enough confidence of not contracting the disease for them to start living a normal life again. We can't expect any kind of normality in the economy until this happens, regardless of whether "America (or any other country) is opened for business" again or not - because an open business is worth nothing if the customers stay away.

duxup 7y ago

Semi tangent, about dealing with mass unemployment. I like to think this event changes people's perspective on folks out of work in the US. There's a lot of recrimination, and even self loathing about being poor or out of work in the US. It doesn't seem based in reality and certainly isn't helpful. Perhaps it is time we realize that much like a pandemic things in this world change fast and we need to be able to help folks who are out of work pick up skills quickly / retrain (and maybe retrain employers that people with a 'different' resume might actually be able to do other jobs) so that they can get back on their feet. Maybe it won't be a pandemic but things are changing fast whole industries of people find themselves offshored, jobs change, etc. I think we need to plan for / get comfortable with the idea that on a smaller scale we should be ready to deal with such things dynamically over the course of people's lives with retraining, support for it, and etc. And maybe a workforce with a variety of experiences will be better for it.

gonzo41 7y ago
In Australia, they closed all the 'non-essential' industries. Which turns out to be about 30% of the workforce. I keep thinking that big shift will be when people come out of this they won't allow themselves to be 'non-essential' ever again. They won't take back those jobs, they'll push for agreements that guarantee a safety net.
- duxup 7y ago
  I wonder how many people feel they have the option to not take back a job? I have such options, exercised them a few years ago when I was 'done' with a particular industry and I wanted to change (networking to web dev, I'm so much happier with my work now), but my ability to do so was largely because the job I had done was a pretty good job pay wise (so I could save) / I received a severance, etc. The jobs that are getting shutdown are different / the people I suspect have fewer options.... at least in the US.
  - gonzo41 7y ago
    When I think about the people who won't take back their jobs, I think about the business owners mostly. Australians love cafe culture and 6 months ago, if you opened a cafe in the Sydney CBD and if you could make good fast coffee, you'd have a great trade with good revenue to match. But now, those small business owners are going to lose business and homes. And a lot of workers may come back, but they won't stay. It's really really bad because we don't have a lot of industries that have openings that can just absorb new hires. Industry doesn't train up people any more, maybe that trend will revert but I really worry for a bubble of people in my community that may loose out and never get a strong footing back.

PaulRobinson 7y ago

A staggering number, and unprecedented in the modern era. I'm not in the US or an America, but my (retired), Father is and for the sake of the people around him and his family I hope this is the point where the American political system - and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead. In the UK we saw an Old-Etonian Tory Prime Minister in the space of a couple of weeks: - Effectively nationalise a huge chunk of private industry by offering to subsidise 80% of all salaries up to £30k/year - Delay tax payments for businesses, and offer up to 15% of GDP in loans and grants to help keep them alive - Renationalise the train industry (privatising it and others was a hallmark of Thatcher's period in power) - Accept that their planned immigration policy post-Brexit is now probably dead in the water because who knew that "low skilled workers" like cleaners and agricultural workers would be useful? - Severely curtail free movement and enterprise by shutting every pub, restaurant, cinema, theatre and cafe across the UK as well as almost every shop that isn't a pharmacy or food shop - Become champion supporters of an NHS they were - until recently - trying to sell bit off of Politics here has changed forever, and likely for the better (assuming the sanctions on free movement and enterprise are temporary and not a back door for more draconian measures). For the sake of the most vulnerable in America, I hope it's the same there too. And maybe - just maybe - it's time everybody took another look at the UBI debate, again.

shripadk 7y ago
> And maybe - just maybe - it's time everybody took another look at the UBI debate, again. Doesn't UBI directly result in inflation and cause currency devaluation? If the money that you hold loses its value (because everyone has at the very least the same amount of money as a basic, consistent income) then it is worth nothing in the end. It is as good as having no money in my humble opinion. Money has to be valuable for it to be useful in trade. Giving away money to everyone devalues the currency.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  You would have to implement it in a way that redistributed wealth, i.e. increase marginal tax rates. The goal is to make sure everyone is housed, fed, and educated. One option is to just give them housing, food, and education. Another is to give people money and let them choose. Yet another is to loan the money and to put them in debt forever.

stupandaus 7y ago

A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] 4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment since they were not covered prior to the passing of the senate bill last night. This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA

claudeganon 7y ago
> This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel. I think we need to couple the two events a little more closely. The 2008 Financial Crisis accelerated inequality, political instability, asset inflation, and the rise of precarious work to such a degree that the damage of this hit is being greatly compounded. To my mind, the hole that was the 2008 crisis was papered over and someone just came by and dropped a brick on it.
- TheNorthman 7y ago
  The former Minister of Finance in greece and current MP Yanis Varoufakis has made the same connection [0]. He argues that it's the same crisis, but that the crisis has transformed, so that the solution can't be the same as in 2008. E.g. the ability of China to offer massive renminbi-swaps is set into question because they are being hit hard by this crisis. The weren't hit during 2008. He also questions whether the US will be willing to offer the same condition-less USD-swaps. [0]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OLfHpvJKNg0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=OLfHpvJKNg0 is an interview where he explains his position.
- malandrew 7y ago
  > the rise of precarious work I'm not going to disagree that there was a rise in precarious work, but I think many people don't realize how valuable having this work as option is. Brazil has been economically struggling for almost a decade now, which is the same decade when this type of work appeared. For many people in Brazil this has been a godsend. It's provided an employment option where previously there would have been none. The option wasn't between precarious work and non-precarious work. It was between precarious work and no work. Precarious work at least lets workers get back on the work ladder and just being on the ladder makes it easier to grab the next rung on the ladder and pull themselves up. It's especially valuable that the precarious work also tends to be flexible. This lets people study for new skills and go to interviews, which is something much harder to do with scheduled work. The economic situation in Brazil would have been far worse if another million or more people doing this precarious work had been unemployed for the last decade instead.

cjslep 7y ago

I grew up with the puritanical mindset of: "Your intrinsic worth as a human is the money you earn; because the money you earn is from how hard you work; and how hard you work is a reflection of your intrinsic Virtue." Thus I grew up in a family that loathes the unemployed. I really hope -- though I have grave doubts -- that this event gets through to them, so that they can have some personal growth, too.

Kaze404 7y ago
That is the saddest thing I've ever read on this site. I know there's people who believe that but it's still shocking to me.
- wmeredith 7y ago
  "Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think." -Ayn Rand I was also raised in a family like this.
- itronitron 7y ago
  This is the view among most Americans, reinforced by the word 'un'employed which suggests that the default condition is for someone to be employed.
  - rodiger 7y ago
    Perhaps not the default but it is the norm. Regardless of semantics we should be pushing UBI for exactly these instances.
mrfusion 7y ago
Sadly everyone seems to be doubling down on their existing strong opinions. (Any ideas to improve that?)
- loopz 7y ago
  People learn through hardship. We haven't experienced hardship yet.

rubber_duck 7y ago

And this is just the start. While I think the US response to Corona was slower than the response in my country I feel the US is the only country that's seriously discussing economic repercussions and debating the medical experts. In EU (at least in my country) it's doctors running things and we are in "stop the pandemic at all cost". Everyone is in panic due to Italy situation. But doctors are only trained to see the medical side of the picture - and there is a point at which this approach to fighting the virus is going to have worse consequences than a full blown pandemic itself - I don't see anyone publicly discussing this point around here.

sundaeofshock 7y ago
Seriously? There were a number of submissions yesterday to HN discussing the relative merits of sacrificing millions for the sake of the market. Perhaps you missed those?
- scottLobster 7y ago
  Not sure if this was your intent, but "sacrificing millions for the sake of the Market" sounds like you're trying to shift away from the point that right now about 3.28 million more folks (probably more) are wondering how to pay their rent/mortgages and feed their children. If this lockdown continues indefinitely the death numbers from the economic fallout will likely eclipse those of the pandemic. But nah, the "market" apparently entirely consists of assholes on Wall Street playing Capitalism II and lobbying governments for payouts. No way it has any real impact!
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - pjc50 7y ago
    This is where it's very important to distinguish between financial conditions and material conditions. Feeding children and supplying respirators and masks are material conditions, dependent on the production and distribution systems. Paying rent and mortgage, on the other hand, isn't material. If you don't pay it nothing material changes - it's not an iron law of the world in the way that hunger is, evictions are a choice. Admittedly it transfers the problem to someone else, but if the solution to maintaining everyone fed includes them then they're not going to go hungry. Financial conditions also have a time tradeoff. Reducing retirement funds affects material conditions in the future. Or the date at which people are able to retire. If you had a button you could press which let you retire immediately, but (with probability P) took the life of some random person in the world, would you press it? With what value of P?

yurlungur 7y ago

The thing about the current situation is that there is still no end in sight and it feels like we are just at the beginning stages of a tough struggle. Thankfully tech seems to be holding up in terms of employment for the moment, but we have stopped hiring as well so who knows what may come next. Not every tech can withstand or even benefit from the current crisis.

scottLobster 7y ago

Won't know for sure until Apr 03 (The Day BLS releases the official unemployment rate for March) but this may very well trip the Sahm recession indicator, which has correctly predicted/detected every US recession back to 1950 (If it's been further backfitted I can't find the data). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMCURRENT https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMCURRENT

yread 7y ago
I don't think you need a black magic/AI/fancy algorithm to tell whether there is a recession or not
- scottLobster 7y ago
  No, but it's nice to have some confirmation :)

donquichotte 7y ago

The economical impact of COVID-19 on people's lives will be far more severe than the biological one. Hopefully this won't discourage governments from taking appropriate action once a more lethal pandemic comes.

johnpowell 7y ago
So lets say that there are a couple hundred thousand dead and you are pretty sure that 50% of the people out there have it. Are you going to go out for dinner or a movie? Not me.. But ignore me if you aren't saying that the restrictions should be reversed so the economy goes back to normal. A guy on CNBC just said that even if it means 400K would die. The economy just will not go back to normal anytime soon.

deleted 7y ago

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big_chungus 7y ago

For this not to bankrupt the nation and retard our growth for the next twenty-five years, we need to all go back to work, today. Even if coronavirus kills a million people, the rest will probably be fine in the long term. If we shut down the economy, three hundred million will be affected. This "flattening the curve" business is clearly not worth it. You cannot shut the economy. There is only so much we can borrow. The fed is buying debt right and left, and the government surely doesn't want to borrow money and remove that liquidity. So, the fed will buy t-bills instead and probably have to inflate the currency to pay for it all. We could end up spending orders of magnitude than 2 trillion on more hand-outs, so we could end up with another period of stagflation. Unless we want to retard our growth and prosperity for the next 25 years, we all have to go back, consequences aside. Vulnerable people need to stay home for months until this blows over; it's not the responsibility of the rest of us to lose our jobs for the sake of a few others. Doctors say we have to stay home, but as doctors, they naturally want to prioritize health. As the saying goes, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Like many other problems, there are diminishing returns as we approach either extreme of opening the economy or shutting it down. This extreme clearly isn't working. The at-risk million stay home; everyone else goes to work.

Kaze404 7y ago
One thing I don't understand about this line of thinking is how do you expect sick people from working? Sure, not everyone will die but a significant portion of the population will get infected and need at the very least to stay home for a week or two. How is that situation better than where we're at now?
- big_chungus 7y ago
  3.28 million people are already out of work, likely a good deal more than that. One million are most at risk. There won't be zero impact, but that's less than a third, right out of the gate. Long-term we'll see significant increases in unemployment on the "shut-it-down" path. To clarify based on your reply to this comment, my point was that we've already seen more people out of work than the estimated worst-case 1.2 million death toll. This is the first data point, and we'll see more huge increases as we gather more. You mentioned that sick people won't work, but we're already seeing what is possibly more unemployment than we'd have with people sick. 1.2 million < 3.28 million. While some people may not work in the short term, this "flattening the curve" business prolongs that time greatly. We'd all be back much sooner if we just ripped off the band-aid and got it over with. EDIT: Replying to circumvent123 here, as HN is rate-limiting. Yes, death is worse than unemployment, but for how many? Death for one vs unemployment for everyone, which would you pick? If so, is this simply a question of the ratio of the two? Regardless, that's not the choice of bureaucrats to make. At-risk populations are responsible for staying home and keeping themselves safe.

pupdogg 7y ago

As you look at this story, please keep some basic numbers in mind: 1. US Population: 329,433,166 (as of 3/25/2020) 2. Employed: 158,130,000 (approx. 48% of population) 3. Unemployed: 8,787,000 (approx. 5.6% of employed) Note: Take these numbers with a grain of salt as US Population is only as good as the Census Reporting itself. The Employed # is an estimate based on 155.76 million factually employed in 2018 and does not include self-employed, contractors, gig workers etc. Sources: 1. https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://www.census.gov/popclock/ 2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the... 3. https://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/us/ https://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/us/

max93 7y ago

The stock rises after the announcement...

quickthrowman 7y ago
Yes, a higher unemployment number was expected. Did you think unemployment going way up wasn’t already partially priced in?

ian0 7y ago

How is our social system so fragile? I mean seriously - thousands of years and wireless comms and rockets to the moon and not only do we forget to prepare for a virus (something that had happened routinely throughout our history) but when it hits and people have to stay at home for a few weeks the economy falls down and leaves millions of people who want to work unable to do so.

lonelappde 7y ago
Rare catastrophes are hard to prepare for, because the cost of preparation is expensive. "Routinely happening" once a century or two isn't an easy target.
- minikites 7y ago
  It's a perfectly achievable target, we just have one political party that prioritizes private corporate profits and the interests of very wealthy citizens above all other societal needs.
  - spritecranberry 7y ago
    Really, your solution to this is "Republicans bad"? The Democrats are far from perfect. I'm not happier than the next guy about the bail-outs of companies, but you're saying it's okay to dispense colossal hand-outs to everyone? The government cannot solve this problem. It's not the government's job. Bad things happen; go back to life.
  - yotossing 7y ago
    > one political party 2
  - lol2143651 7y ago
    Cringe
abyssin 7y ago
Don't even start to think about climate change, a phenomenon we're completely aware is happening, but still do nothing about, despite consequences that will be worse than this virus.

testing_vpn 7y ago

Heya, can you do everyone a favour and go fuck yourself? Much appreciated, thanks :)

mrfusion 7y ago

What is the process for freelancers to get unemployment? I think that was mentioned in the new stimulus?

lonelappde 7y ago
Some info: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/can-i-collect-unemployment-if-i-m-self-employed-2064148 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/can-i-collect-unemployment...
mempko 7y ago
Yes, you can thank Bernie Sanders for that.

hopfog 7y ago

Just to illustrate how absurd this number is: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUCTISVXQAcIKEb?format=png&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUCTISVXQAcIKEb?format=png&name=...

trackone 7y ago
This is messing up charts so much that maybe in a couple years we will be removing 2020 from the data just to have a chart that doesn't have a crazy x-axis.
- b3kart 7y ago
  2020: the Shetland Islands of unemployment charts. (For context: https://bit.ly/2UEV5H5 https://bit.ly/2UEV5H5)
dwaltrip 7y ago
Holy shit... That is absolutely nuts. And to think it will likely get worse.

poidos 7y ago

Most, if not all (?) will lose their healthcare. Horrible situation to be in during a pandemic.

csomar 7y ago

> A week ago, he said he had “a good middle-class job” which paid him $35.50 an hour plus health care and retirement benefits. Now he is struggling to figure out how he’ll pay a $300 electric bill and $1,000 in rent for his townhouse. He also lost his health insurance. You make $35.5/hour in (I suppose?) a stable job but if the work stops for a week, you struggle with a $300 bill? I know some people are living paycheck to paycheck but starting from a certain income you should build a safety net. What about your IRA? What about your credit score? What about small investments? Looks like some people are living $ to $ without leaving any money aside. This might be what is going to make this even harder for the economy.

big_chungus 7y ago
This is exactly right. The economy has grown to unsustainable levels based on the economic habits of the average American who can't be bothered to save, hence the crash we're seeing now. At sixty hours a week, that guy should be making six figures, pre-tax. There is zero excuse for not saving. Everyone should save at least six months of salary for emergencies; though a few people legitimately can't, most Americans simply don't bother because they'd rather spend that money on the new i phone. Edit: Williamdclt, I'll answer your question here due to rate-limiting. Yes, lots of us do; I've been working that way since internships in high school. Same with many others I know. Usually, though, it's close to 12 hours a day and none on Saturday, or maybe 11 a day and a little on the weekend. Not an issue so long as you plan about an hour a day for something fun and mindless, and leave weekends free to do chores/relax. Edit: Consz, responding here due to rate-limiting. Not all of us live in the same world. I'm glad to hear you and your friends are doing well, but that's not representative of everyone. I do because I'm currently hourly, and that's true of many of the people I mentioned. When every additional hour worked has more money associated with it, most people will work more; that's not silly. The downside is, of course, there's a distinct opportunity cost to taking time off, so I don't do so much of that.
- minikites 7y ago
  Wages have stagnated since the 1970s: https://i.stack.imgur.com/m7EXP.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/m7EXP.jpg

KoftaBob 7y ago

Isn't it meaningful that the cause of this particular unemployment is very unique, in that it wasn't caused by a weak economy, but by the government artificially closing the businesses temporarily? Theoretically, once everything starts to open back up, won't there be a similarly sized surge in "new jobs" so to speak?

throwaway_USD 7y ago

Everyone should expect the stock market to thrive off this data today...

treyfitty 7y ago
Why’s that? I see that the SP500 is rising... but why is this “good news” for businesses?
- throwaway_USD 7y ago
  The danger was businesses losing customers (revenue/income), which these initial numbers confirm...but on the other hand these jobless folks (and the whole country)just took out a $6T loan, of which $5.75T is going to these businesses ($1.75 will not have to be paid back and $4T will be interest free loans, and likely in may cases these companies will actually have negative interest rates, in other words they will make money on borrowing these tax payer loans). These are the very same companies that will also avoid paying US taxes. Public companies cut all their costs/expenses and are going to be given $5.75T...mainstreet can't buy on these lows (because they have no jobs/income, fear and lack of liquidity are a bad combination) and the companies are flush with cash to buy back stocks now before they get the real windfall from tax payers. In short, public companies will be spending today to buy their own stock.
  - treyfitty 7y ago
    But it's been confirmed that stock buybacks will not be allowed for companies receiving a bailout. Am I missing something more here? https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-stimulus-package-set-to-ban-stock-buybacks-for-companies-that-get-aid-2020-03-25 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-stimulus-packa...
    - throwaway_USD 7y ago
      >Am I missing something more here? Apparently...they are doing the buy backs now (like right now) while they are flush with cash/no expenses, main street can't invest, and before they get their bailout cash. Never mind the buy back prohibitions are being majorly overstated.

mensetmanusman 7y ago

A year from now, will we look back and say it was worth the suffering for something 5x as bad as the flu? (based on Germany’s numbers, which are more fully accounting for those with mild symptoms) Shows how important testing randomly is, if the denominator is low because you are only testing those in the hospital, it looks like the second coming of the Spanish flu.

matwood 7y ago
Even if we raise the denominator to make the percentages look better, there is no denying that hospitals are being overwhelmed. The flu often already pushed hospitals to the edge, so even only (heh) 5x worse will cause most hospital systems collapse.
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  Should 1000 people go unemployed to save one person?
  - cbruns 7y ago
    Phrased differently, are you willing to die to give employment to 1000 people?
    - mensetmanusman 7y ago
      Phrased differently, I would be willing to die to give employment to 1000 people who can work to save 10 (?) people. If people aren’t working to care for the system, then doctors can’t find helpers with their kids, etc. The system collapses in this scenario as well. I don’t have a real answer, but this event is helping discuss interesting and difficult questions. If I was over 70 y.o., I would think that I would be willing to die to prevent my grandchildren from experiencing the great depression.
  - gnulinux 7y ago
    Obviously right? Clearly temporary unemployment of any number of people seems less important than death of thousands, if not millions of people.

kingkawn 7y ago

At least in New York the state dept of labor unemployment page is broken under the server stress and untold numbers of people haven’t been able to login and file claims.

fallingfrog 7y ago

Things that Coronavirus is teaching us: -the people who are actually vital to make the economy are grocery clerks, doctors, nurses, teachers and other carers, but not corporate CEOs, who are ultimately just dead weight. -money is imaginary and they can print as much as they want. -the people in power right now would rather have the stock market crash and watch you and a million other Americans die than give healthcare to everyone, even in the middle of a pandemic. How much would it help to have a centralized, organized response where everyone gets tested early right now? But it’s impossible, because it would mean giving health care to poor people. -capitalism is a beast that dies if it cannot grow. People work mostly to pay rent and debts. They pay rent so the landlord can pay the mortgage. The bank has already lent out the money they expect to get from people paying the mortgage- so if property owners don’t pay their monthly bill, the whole financial system has a heart attack. Same thing with corporate debt. The corporation is assuming that you’re going to buy crap you don’t need. If you don’t, then they can’t pay their massive debts and again the whole system seizes up. So the primary reason we spend all our useful hours at work is so that we can make numbers bigger at the bank. And all of these debts, ultimately, are paid off on the backs of the working class. But the whole system can’t be reduced, or paused, or even slowed down- it must grow exponentially more and more, consuming more and more resources forever, or else it craters in a devastating crash and cannibalizes itself on the way down.

smileysteve 7y ago
There are 2 policy options I see moving forward: Public: Healthcare and Unemployment (possibly sick leave) Private: Forced GAAP accounting for 2-4 weeks of sick leave for all employees (including gig contractors) These would be paramount to national security; so could potentially receive backing loans or even the defense budget.
rchaud 7y ago
I'm not sure if the lessons will be interpreted in this way, or even remembered once things go back to some form of normalcy, at least for the monied classes that hold the largest microphones in our society. The lessons learned from the conflict in Vietnam was not that "war is a racket" or "the US shouldn't militarily intervene unless it's a last resort". It was simply that "the US should use proxies where possible and only intervene where the opposition has a limited capacity to fight back". And even then, they've greatly overestimated their strength in these conflicts. Because the people with the largest microphones said it would be enough to win.

helen___keller 7y ago

My biggest concern is that we aren't working on the infrastructure and cultural shift that is going to be needed to have a return to normal. The endgame of covid-19 is herd immunity, which requires either 30-60% of the population infected and recovered, or it requires a vaccine. Realistically both are probably 9+ months out: vaccines are slow to develop, and almost every governor has proven they'd rather shut down everything than see hospitals be overloaded. In other words, for the next 6-12 months we have two choices: (a) Public life sees a boom-bust pattern of sickness, where we open things back up, then a new outbreak of infection happens, and everything shuts down again for 2-6 weeks. (b) We aggressively fight off our initial outbreak, then build infrastructure to quickly identify and contain all infections. We gently reopen life back to a kind-of-normal states of permanent semi-quarantine until a vaccine arrives. In my opinion, (b) is clearly the optimal approach. And yet we haven't even begun working on the infrastructural and cultural changes needed to support pre-herd-immunity public life. We need mass production of face masks and a culture where it is unacceptable to not wear a face mask in public, particularly crowded locations and public transit. We need every building, every bus and train, every tourist attraction, testing every visitor with a contactless thermometer. If you have a fever you get a covid-19 test. To support allowing non-remote-capable work to resume, any jobs that are remote capable should remain remote until we have herd immunity. More people leaving their homes means higher risk of an outbreak, and when an outbreak happens non-remote-capable employees are the ones screwed over. As much as I distrust the CCP and China's official numbers, it just takes one glance on the measures being taken in China to prove that China is a thousand times more serious about containing this virus than we are, and that's going to play in their favor in getting things back to normal. Here's an eye-opening video on some of the steps Nanjing has taken to prevent an outbreak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM&feature=youtu.be The simple fact is we're lacking the national leadership to make an effective response to this disease.

bin0 7y ago
Cultural changes? How would you build those? The government doesn't control the culture. How would you make it unacceptable? Bureaucrats don't have direct control over that. Also, a bunch of "we need"s about the ideal situation don't do much. The reason the China contained it is because she is an authoritarian state. While that provides certain advantages in this situation, it comes with certain drawbacks: not being able to access many websites, inability to express your political opinion, inability to own a firearm, being tossed in a concentration camp if the government doesn't like you. This isn't a question of leadership, you're asking the government to do things it literally has no power to do, things entirely outside of the constitution.

dpcan 7y ago

Being a sole proprietor / contractor right now feels hopeless. Nobody is spending money with me right now, projects on hold, no possible way of filing for unemployment. It's worrisome. Thankfully my wife is still working - but she's an administrator at a Nursing Home and people there are starting to get tested - and she's panicking. They are days from having no nurses. She's worried about cleaning crews being sick. She's worried about bringing it home. Luckily they have a stockpile of supplies, BUT THIS WHOLE THING IS ABOUT TO BLOW UP! The problem is that the tests of their employees are taking UP TO 10 DAYS to come back. They are sending home nurses for this long just to wait and see if they are all going to be exposed, their residents too. Anyone in their facility who may be sick is being sent home for 14 days. There will be nobody left to take care of the elderly, who may also get sick. People are worried about dying themselves, or the people they care for dying. I'm confident we are 10 days from hearing about Nursing Homes and Nurses in Nursing Homes everywhere getting sick and dying in massive numbers.

cheeze 7y ago
> Being a sole proprietor / contractor right now feels hopeless. Nobody is spending money with me right now, projects on hold, no possible way of filing for unemployment. It's worrisome. Please don't take this as me being captain hindsight here, but I think that this pandemic has reallllly shown the need for an emergency fund. IMO if you're sole prop or contractor, you owe it to yourself to have a bigger emergency fund for this exact scenario.
- manquer 7y ago
  It is not that people don’t know this and spend all they make. Not all contractors make enough to save for an emergency fund easily. Independent of all of this, every experienced contractor knows that sometimes there will be dull patches and you save for that . However it is not always possible to do so, and you may have saved for 2weeks or 2 months and it may not be enough the economy might limp for 6months or a year .
- GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
  perhaps having better social safety nets like 90% of the developed world would be better, no?

mr_isomies 7y ago

Underpinning this (and similar announcements in other western economies) is the fact that in the last 4 to 8 years, most of the "new jobs" created have in fact been part-time. Just like for the number of covid infected vs detected, this might very be the tip of the iceberg.

rsweeney21 7y ago

The US federal and state governments have implemented policies that have forced a large number of businesses to close temporarily. A business that is closed can't pay it's employees, so naturally it would have to lay them off. If tomorrow we found a cure and got the all clear to return to life as normal, how many of the 3.28M would be re-hired immediately? What we need is a distinction between being laid off temporarily and being laid off permanently. That would give us a clearer picture of the real economic impact. We need a new metric. The senate stimulus bill should have included a new classification and support for workers temporarily put on unpaid leave.

biolurker1 7y ago

Stock market up, Trump says churches will be full of people in two weeks. I'm watching a movie it seems

wayne_skylar 7y ago

More than anything right now people are going to have a very strong appetite for financial security. It's about time we reconsider 'working for 50 weeks to pay for 52' as a viable means to have that security.

fallingfrog 7y ago

Now, try to imagine how we’re going to de-grow the economy to deal with climate change without some form of de facto communism. I never would have said this a month ago but I think there’s no other way the future can go.

tmpynews 7y ago

Someone can correct me on this if I am wrong. Most of the unemployment is people on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of financials. Most of them are in the service sector. The middle of the pack group did not suffer because of this (yet). Whenever this clears the service sector, travel, restaurants, hospitality etc will bounce back very quickly. So all the people that lost their jobs could just get them back and the recovery will be sharp. However, the kick in the nuts will be if the virus drags on for months. Then it becomes uncertain.

MisterBastahrd 7y ago

For those playing at home, that's 3.28 million people who probably don't have access to health care now. Many probably didn't before due to the nature of their jobs, but it's going to be interesting to watch the cry for bailout of hospitals from the same politicians who are completely fine otherwise with people going without healthcare.

abootstrapper 7y ago

And the stock market loves it? I’m so confused.

01100011 7y ago
It may be a temporary bump. I'm still debating pulling some money out of the market for a while. I'd still be buying via my 401(k), so I'm not totally out, but I just feel like the fundamentals will pull the market down for a while. Then again, we will probably, finally, start to see (stag|in)flation soon so having cash may be a bad move.

rukittenme 7y ago

My initial response to this is... duh. How many governments have ordered people not to work. Is it surprising that all those people would then file for not working benefits? Of course not. Its an artificial unemployment spike (provoked by very real, fundamental forces in the world i.e. covid-19). It will be VERY interesting to watch how state governments react to this spike. The federal government has monopoly money but state governments are VERY MUCH concerned with debt levels. We'll see how long these isolation orders last. States will have to chose between unemployment, pensions, welfare programs, transit operations, etc. I wonder who gets the axe first. You could very easily see states go bankrupt and whole classes of the social safety net depleted for a generation.

stillbourne 7y ago

You know how to fix the problem with those record layoffs though right? First cut all funding to social safety net programs and use that money to give tax cuts to the rich, who then don't even pretend that trickle down economics works and instead set up a fund for the public to donate to help those who need relief because fuck you I got mine.

adriancooney 7y ago

I wonder would a vaccine be able to reverse this instantly? Can you imagine. It's going to be a bumpy few months.

neonate 7y ago

https://archive.md/6BC8F https://archive.md/6BC8F

peterwwillis 7y ago

Reminder: we spend 700 Billion on our military. No reason that can't be reduced to provide aid if needed.

Daniel_sk 7y ago

And yet - S&P 500 reacts with a sharp climb and most investors already think we hit the bottom two days ago.

AtlasBarfed 7y ago

If the US was smart (big if...) The pandemic quarantine will accumulate pent up demand, or at least a desire to consume once it is "over". A good economic recovery would provide enough money to fund this demand and immediately reward rehiring of people to previous levels. But this will be a series of discredited supply-side measures until (perhaps) a Keynesian friendly democrat is in office.

treyfitty 7y ago
Pent up demand for what? I’m being half facetious here, but something of this magnitude and rare will likely cause a shift in our world-views. This whole talk of “pent up demand” in Econ 101 really leads me to believe this system is guided by shibboleths and buzz phrases. Let’s be real for a second: this pandemic will fundamentally change consumption as we recalibrate just how much we “need” that new shiny thing.

justlexi93 7y ago

Recession will take place in every country next year so expect that the number of jobless people will strike up during and after the pandemic.

anthony_barker 7y ago

Canada wins 500,000 jobs lost at 10% of the population. Oil and gas prices is a double whammy.