11 ms·

Back-of-the-envelope estimates of next quarter’s unemployment rate

151 points by fdye 7y ago

dcolkitt 7y ago
Most important caveat from the link: > [T]hese calculations do not account for any potential effects of fiscal measures, such as payroll support measures for small businesses A $2 trillion stimulus very likely means that the actual figures are significantly less than what this model calculates.
- chasd00 7y ago
  I'm really tired of stats of the very worst case but with a headline implying it's what experts are expecting.
  - pulisse 7y ago
    The headline only exists in the HN submission. TFA is entitled "Back-of-the-Envelope Estimates of Next Quarter’s Unemployment Rate."
- sobellian 7y ago
  In fairness the author also gave a massive error bar "between 10.5% and 40.6%." So whether or not the stimulus is sufficient to avert the worst depends on where we sit between "mild recession" and "social collapse."
  - nostromo 7y ago
    10.5% unemployment isn't a mild recession. It's a touch worse than 2008.
    - sobellian 7y ago
      True, but I think there's more metrics to a recession than peak unemployment. It took years for unemployment to dip below 8% after 2008, but only time will tell what the recovery looks like here.
elamje 7y ago
Mostest Important caveat from the link: This is not an official St. Louis Fed calculation. The post is titled “back-of-the-envelop estimate of unemployment”, the data sources are from two blog posts, and it was written by a researcher on their blog. This is not an official document, and appears that it likely wasn’t vetted.
- 01100011 7y ago
  If you believe the conclusion that 50% of small businesses don't have cash reserves for a month(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22719981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22719981), and ~50% of Americans with jobs work for small businesses, it's not far fetched to think that 25% of people will soon be unemployed. Add in the people working for larger firms, like travel and vacation related firms, and you can easily get to 30% unemployment.
  - gullyfur 7y ago
    Several businesses near me immediately announced on social media they were permanently closing for business, the moment the lockdown was announced. They must have been struggling prior to the lockdown and knew there would be no way to recover.
bpodgursky 7y ago
The most infuriating part of the shutdown is the disconnect I see between comments on Twitter, where the shutdown is basically a game because everyone has a WFH-capable tech job, and in real life, where I have family members suddenly unemployed, with wild uncertainty about whether they'll get their job back (in a month? two? three?). It's incredibly stressful, and not a fun joke. Like, independent of whether you think the shutdown is the right risk / reward tradeoff, please at least think about the 70% of the workforce that cannot work from home, because they work in restaurants or physical service jobs. If you are still working (or at least pulling a paycheck), you're incredibly lucky -- please don't act like you have the only voice of moral authority about when and how this should end, and the calculus that goes into that tradeoff.
- michaelyoshika 7y ago
  This separation of society is the worse problem here.
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  Thank you for stating what my mind couldn't quite put into words. I see lots of people with professional-class, WFH jobs being very sanctimonious about any suggestion that we should in any way take into account the financial impact when making the risk-reward decisions. Which, taken to its logical conclusion, would suggest that a worse-than-average flu season should also shut everything down, since tens of thousands of lives could be at stake. If this were somehow a pandemic which impacted the professional class more than the working class, I suspect we would see a very different moral calculus at work.
  - SeyelentEco 7y ago
    I agree with the grandparent that we aren't worried enough about the large percentage of people that can't work at home but your statement that "would suggest that a worse-than-average flu season" is not backed by any science. There are 12-60k deaths a year from the flu according to the CDC (last year is in the 24-60k range). There are 37k deaths from COVID right now and the number is still increasing at non-linear rates. This is /on-top/ of the flu deaths. So this isn't just "a slightly worse flu season".
jedberg 7y ago
I don’t think any of their models can accurately predict what will happen. We don't have any good prior examples to base the models on. I don't think the economy will recover, but I also don't think it is possible to guess how bad it will be. I don’t think there is any model that can predict pent up demand. I know a lot of my friends who still have jobs are talking about going out every night when the quarantine lifts so they don’t have to cook. If a lot of people do that, we’ll suddenly need a lot of waiters back. And then they’ll have money. Or maybe everyone will have learned that they love cooking at home and never go out again. I don’t think there is any way to tell. We don’t have any good prior data. All the previous models assumed unemployment claims and stock market drops when it was possible for everyone to work. Right now there are a lot of jobs that are temporarily suspended skewing the numbers.
- mcphilip 7y ago
  But will your friends get haircuts, manicures, massages, etc every day when the quarantine lifts? Pent up demand only helps certain industries, unfortunately. Imagine being a hair dresser with a stack of bills from the shutdown and no big boost to income after the quarantine lifts to help pay things off. Rough times ahead for many, sadly.
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    It'll be interesting to see if habits change. It takes 30 days to change a habit. Will people just get used to not eating out. Personally I am enjoying this lack of unnecessarily bullshit spending that is imposed by the quarantine.
    - mulmen 7y ago
      I think the change in habit will have catastrophic impacts in the short term. Landlords seem totally willing to let prime restaurant real estate sit open. In my neighborhood several storefronts have sat vacant for years waiting for a tenant that can survive more than a few months. Rents continually increase. This drives up food prices and landlords have become accustomed to those rates. Post-virus the new demand will not support those prices. I am enjoying spending less money to eat but restaurants will not be able to reduce price to meet the lesser demand because their rents will not go down any time soon. The current restaurants will have to fail and that property will have to sit for potentially years before rent is reduced. We need a penalty (additional property tax?) on vacant real estate to drive prices back down with shifting demand.
idoh 7y ago
That would make it higher than the great depression, which peaked at 23%.
- zelly 7y ago
  Underrated
- m0zg 7y ago
  Which is why the "model" is 100% certified organic horseshit. If they want to tell me that a temporary pause in the roaring economy is worse than the largest systemic collapse to ever happen to it, I say "GTFO".
  - take_a_breath 7y ago
    When was the economy “roaring”? I saw asset prices roaring, but not wages or GDP.
  - TheCowboy 7y ago
    Real damage is happening. It's nothing short of hugely multiple swearwords level wrong if you think this is a mere temporary pause where everyone can pick back up where we left off.
  - vkou 7y ago
    The only thing that was roaring about the economy was the printing press called QE. It's been turned back on, which is why the market is bullish at the moment.
  - itsgrimetime 7y ago
    "Temporary pause" is an incredibly naive way to describe what's happening. Millions of people (and businesses) will miss their rent/mortgage payments that are due Wednesday. Some not-insignificant portion of those missed rent payments will result in more mortgage payments being missed. Many who've lost their jobs and rack up debt during this won't be able to find a job when the economy is able to be spun back up. It seems obvious that there's going to be terrible cascading effects.
cirgue 7y ago
Can we get a title change? The actual title of the article is "Back-of-the-Envelope Estimates of Next Quarter’s Unemployment Rate", which is emphatically not the St. Louis Fed estimating anything.
- icedchai 7y ago
  Well, it is on the St. Louis Fed's web site...
trixie_ 7y ago
If it's raining you bring an umbrella, if it's hot you wear shorts, if there's a pandemic you wear a mask - everywhere all the time. They shouldn't of let people on airplanes, buses, buildings, etc.. without a mask. Don't have one? Here's some scissors cut up a tshirt, or use a scarf. It doesn't need to be N95 perfect. Just a barrier to keep you from touching your face, and to catch a good amount of spit flying out of your mouth every time you open it. Grocery stores, gas stations, offices that are still open, private social gathering, etc.. still no one is wearing a mask (in America at least) Asia was way ahead of us with their health culture on this one, we need to step it up. Unfortunately it's a message that really needs to come from the highest levels. The politicians, news casters, etc.. on TV need to be giving announcements with masks to get the point across.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > if there's a pandemic you wear a mask - everywhere all the time I thought the expert advice from the WHO is to not wear a mask? > There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly. Do you know better than the WHO?
  - codekilla 7y ago
    Yes, see my comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727995 It's bewildering the US and European guidance on this. Edit: read this carefully: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843947/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843947/ It will apply to SARS-CoV-2
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      Why do you think the WHO disagree with you on the facts? It doesn’t seem likely to me that they’re just less informed than you are.
      - 7y ago
ilamont 7y ago
From the caveat list: many businesses may send workers home with pay instead of laying them off outright. Others may get some other benefit, like the friend of a friend who gets health insurance but no pay through the beginning of June. Not sure how it impacts unemployment benefits. I think the hope is that this thing will cycle through, the economy will recover (like after 9/11) and people can be brought back to the same job.
legitster 7y ago
What is happening to the US economy is completely unprecedented. The comparison I most hear is to WWII - but instead of pivoting to support sending people to war and supporting their needs, our economy is pivoting to sending them home. But as near as I can tell, we only ever sent about 10% of the population to WWII. This is 3x the hit of WWII! (I get that we don't have to make guns and tanks for people, just feed and house them).
- viklove 7y ago
  Instead of pivoting to support the needs of Americans, we're shoveling money into massive corporations. Obviously it's not the American labourer who needs help. No, it's the shareholders and execs who run big companies. I love this country!
  - H8crilA 7y ago
    When even the investment grade (look up LQD; was recently bailed out by the Fed) gets beaten up like that you know that your money isn't safe anywhere. Not in any money market fund, not in your bank, not in any CD, not as "cash" in your brokerage account. I bet that most financial institutions are technically insolvent right now (or at least were, a week or two ago). Also, there's only so much the Fed can do, it really is just a bank that deals exclusively with other large players by sending pieces of paper around (or these days - data packets). That's it. The rest is up to the Congress, the Fed has already printed the money for them, and will surely print more if needed. Ultimately it's a medical emergency, not a financial one. It's up to the doctors and people in charge to help fix this mess. The "money people" are merely dancing to the spectacle.
    - samspenc 7y ago
      So I was piqued by your post, and actually looked it up. It looks like the bond / credit market in the US is just under $40 trillion [1], and the value of the US stock market is $37.69 trillion [2]. So they look pretty close? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_market [2] https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/ https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/
xiaolingxiao 7y ago
Is there a breakdown of retail and travel-industry related jobs, versus other categories?
- thedance 7y ago
  Yes. Consider, for example, any reason why Las Vegas should continue to exist.
H8crilA 7y ago
BTW, the St. Louis Fed has one of the biggest blessings for your "I can't afford neither Bloomberg nor Refinitiv" amateur economist. The amount of time series and the basic ability to do pointwise arithmetic operations is great! All series sorted by popularity: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/tags/series https://fred.stlouisfed.org/tags/series I wish other central banks (in other countries) stepped up to this amazing level.
- yingw787 7y ago
  Seconded. I (think? don't remember) I did Fed Challenge back in the day, and the econ resources I trusted most was Bloomberg/Economics, CNBC/Economics, and FRED by far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Fed_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Fed_Challenge
  - baryphonic 7y ago
    I second that. When I did the College Fed Challenge, FRED was my team's go-to source, followed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and National Bureau of Economic Research. We had a little pipeline where we'd take their data and make nicer-looking charts in Excel that we could import into our slide deck. When I'm taking to laymen about economics, I still refer to FRED charts because they're so accessible and the number of series is enormous.
TheCowboy 7y ago
There's not enough pressure on politicians in both parties to ensure a solid and fast as possible recovery. It could end up that members of mostly one party in the Senate end up blocking most of these bare minimum measures. Look at what some European countries are doing as the minimum: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-economic-rescue-virus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-econo... Here are some (for the most part) good ideas that should be considered: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/coronavirus-economy-saez-zucman.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/coronavirus-econo...
- tathougies 7y ago
  America has given full unemployment plus extra money, plus free money. How is that different from privatizing payroll? Why is an 'employment guarantee' any better than what is happening in most of America -- layoffs with an explicit promise to rehire once the business is allowed to operate? It's not like paying companies to keep people on payroll in jobs that are not producing economic value really reduces unemployment anymore than not testing for coronavirus makes it go away. I don't know why americans are so afraid of 'mass unemployment'. Most businesses will survive this crisis, due to debt suspensions or new debt at a very low rate or via direct government aid (which the government has so far provided plentifully, and will likely do more). Businesses have promised to rehire. However, a business that cannot right now provide a job that has value to the business ought to lay off people and let the social safety net take care. The articles make some good points regarding healthcare, but aside from that, it makes no good argument why unemployment + the unemployment insurance that workers have paid into for exactly this scenario is worse than paying businesses to keep people on payroll who wouldn't be there otherwise.
  - omegaworks 7y ago
    >I don't know why americans are so afraid of 'mass unemployment'. In the United States, health insurance is provided by your employer. To purchase it without their leverage is prohibitively expensive without a sizable, reliable income.
bmurray7jhu 7y ago
"Views expressed are not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or of the Federal Reserve System."
tempsy 7y ago
And yet stocks have rebounded 20% since Monday lows last week.
- ccktlmazeltov 7y ago
  You're looking at SP500, which are big companies that are going to be fine.
  - gruez 7y ago
    All-cap indices (eg. VB) have seen similar rebounds, although they did rebound less than the large cap companies (SPY).
starpilot 7y ago
What is their track records for these estimates? Have they accurate in the past? My impression from GDP growth estimates is that everyone stays close to the average growth, but actual growth is apparently much more volatile in a random way. Similar with EPS estimates from stock analysts.

151 points by fdye 7y ago

Most important caveat from the link: > [T]hese calculations do not account for any potential effects of fiscal measures, such as payroll support measures for small businesses A $2 trillion stimulus very likely means that the actual figures are significantly less than what this model calculates.

chasd00 7y ago
I'm really tired of stats of the very worst case but with a headline implying it's what experts are expecting.
- pulisse 7y ago
  The headline only exists in the HN submission. TFA is entitled "Back-of-the-Envelope Estimates of Next Quarter’s Unemployment Rate."
sobellian 7y ago
In fairness the author also gave a massive error bar "between 10.5% and 40.6%." So whether or not the stimulus is sufficient to avert the worst depends on where we sit between "mild recession" and "social collapse."
- nostromo 7y ago
  10.5% unemployment isn't a mild recession. It's a touch worse than 2008.
  - sobellian 7y ago
    True, but I think there's more metrics to a recession than peak unemployment. It took years for unemployment to dip below 8% after 2008, but only time will tell what the recovery looks like here.

elamje 7y ago

Mostest Important caveat from the link: This is not an official St. Louis Fed calculation. The post is titled “back-of-the-envelop estimate of unemployment”, the data sources are from two blog posts, and it was written by a researcher on their blog. This is not an official document, and appears that it likely wasn’t vetted.

01100011 7y ago
If you believe the conclusion that 50% of small businesses don't have cash reserves for a month(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22719981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22719981), and ~50% of Americans with jobs work for small businesses, it's not far fetched to think that 25% of people will soon be unemployed. Add in the people working for larger firms, like travel and vacation related firms, and you can easily get to 30% unemployment.
- gullyfur 7y ago
  Several businesses near me immediately announced on social media they were permanently closing for business, the moment the lockdown was announced. They must have been struggling prior to the lockdown and knew there would be no way to recover.

bpodgursky 7y ago

The most infuriating part of the shutdown is the disconnect I see between comments on Twitter, where the shutdown is basically a game because everyone has a WFH-capable tech job, and in real life, where I have family members suddenly unemployed, with wild uncertainty about whether they'll get their job back (in a month? two? three?). It's incredibly stressful, and not a fun joke. Like, independent of whether you think the shutdown is the right risk / reward tradeoff, please at least think about the 70% of the workforce that cannot work from home, because they work in restaurants or physical service jobs. If you are still working (or at least pulling a paycheck), you're incredibly lucky -- please don't act like you have the only voice of moral authority about when and how this should end, and the calculus that goes into that tradeoff.

michaelyoshika 7y ago
This separation of society is the worse problem here.
rossdavidh 7y ago
Thank you for stating what my mind couldn't quite put into words. I see lots of people with professional-class, WFH jobs being very sanctimonious about any suggestion that we should in any way take into account the financial impact when making the risk-reward decisions. Which, taken to its logical conclusion, would suggest that a worse-than-average flu season should also shut everything down, since tens of thousands of lives could be at stake. If this were somehow a pandemic which impacted the professional class more than the working class, I suspect we would see a very different moral calculus at work.
- SeyelentEco 7y ago
  I agree with the grandparent that we aren't worried enough about the large percentage of people that can't work at home but your statement that "would suggest that a worse-than-average flu season" is not backed by any science. There are 12-60k deaths a year from the flu according to the CDC (last year is in the 24-60k range). There are 37k deaths from COVID right now and the number is still increasing at non-linear rates. This is /on-top/ of the flu deaths. So this isn't just "a slightly worse flu season".

jedberg 7y ago

I don’t think any of their models can accurately predict what will happen. We don't have any good prior examples to base the models on. I don't think the economy will recover, but I also don't think it is possible to guess how bad it will be. I don’t think there is any model that can predict pent up demand. I know a lot of my friends who still have jobs are talking about going out every night when the quarantine lifts so they don’t have to cook. If a lot of people do that, we’ll suddenly need a lot of waiters back. And then they’ll have money. Or maybe everyone will have learned that they love cooking at home and never go out again. I don’t think there is any way to tell. We don’t have any good prior data. All the previous models assumed unemployment claims and stock market drops when it was possible for everyone to work. Right now there are a lot of jobs that are temporarily suspended skewing the numbers.

mcphilip 7y ago
But will your friends get haircuts, manicures, massages, etc every day when the quarantine lifts? Pent up demand only helps certain industries, unfortunately. Imagine being a hair dresser with a stack of bills from the shutdown and no big boost to income after the quarantine lifts to help pay things off. Rough times ahead for many, sadly.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  It'll be interesting to see if habits change. It takes 30 days to change a habit. Will people just get used to not eating out. Personally I am enjoying this lack of unnecessarily bullshit spending that is imposed by the quarantine.
  - mulmen 7y ago
    I think the change in habit will have catastrophic impacts in the short term. Landlords seem totally willing to let prime restaurant real estate sit open. In my neighborhood several storefronts have sat vacant for years waiting for a tenant that can survive more than a few months. Rents continually increase. This drives up food prices and landlords have become accustomed to those rates. Post-virus the new demand will not support those prices. I am enjoying spending less money to eat but restaurants will not be able to reduce price to meet the lesser demand because their rents will not go down any time soon. The current restaurants will have to fail and that property will have to sit for potentially years before rent is reduced. We need a penalty (additional property tax?) on vacant real estate to drive prices back down with shifting demand.

idoh 7y ago

That would make it higher than the great depression, which peaked at 23%.

zelly 7y ago
Underrated
m0zg 7y ago
Which is why the "model" is 100% certified organic horseshit. If they want to tell me that a temporary pause in the roaring economy is worse than the largest systemic collapse to ever happen to it, I say "GTFO".
- take_a_breath 7y ago
  When was the economy “roaring”? I saw asset prices roaring, but not wages or GDP.
- TheCowboy 7y ago
  Real damage is happening. It's nothing short of hugely multiple swearwords level wrong if you think this is a mere temporary pause where everyone can pick back up where we left off.
- vkou 7y ago
  The only thing that was roaring about the economy was the printing press called QE. It's been turned back on, which is why the market is bullish at the moment.
- itsgrimetime 7y ago
  "Temporary pause" is an incredibly naive way to describe what's happening. Millions of people (and businesses) will miss their rent/mortgage payments that are due Wednesday. Some not-insignificant portion of those missed rent payments will result in more mortgage payments being missed. Many who've lost their jobs and rack up debt during this won't be able to find a job when the economy is able to be spun back up. It seems obvious that there's going to be terrible cascading effects.

cirgue 7y ago

Can we get a title change? The actual title of the article is "Back-of-the-Envelope Estimates of Next Quarter’s Unemployment Rate", which is emphatically not the St. Louis Fed estimating anything.

icedchai 7y ago
Well, it is on the St. Louis Fed's web site...

trixie_ 7y ago

If it's raining you bring an umbrella, if it's hot you wear shorts, if there's a pandemic you wear a mask - everywhere all the time. They shouldn't of let people on airplanes, buses, buildings, etc.. without a mask. Don't have one? Here's some scissors cut up a tshirt, or use a scarf. It doesn't need to be N95 perfect. Just a barrier to keep you from touching your face, and to catch a good amount of spit flying out of your mouth every time you open it. Grocery stores, gas stations, offices that are still open, private social gathering, etc.. still no one is wearing a mask (in America at least) Asia was way ahead of us with their health culture on this one, we need to step it up. Unfortunately it's a message that really needs to come from the highest levels. The politicians, news casters, etc.. on TV need to be giving announcements with masks to get the point across.

chrisseaton 7y ago
> if there's a pandemic you wear a mask - everywhere all the time I thought the expert advice from the WHO is to not wear a mask? > There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly. Do you know better than the WHO?
- codekilla 7y ago
  Yes, see my comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727995 It's bewildering the US and European guidance on this. Edit: read this carefully: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843947/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843947/ It will apply to SARS-CoV-2
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    Why do you think the WHO disagree with you on the facts? It doesn’t seem likely to me that they’re just less informed than you are.
    - 7y ago

ilamont 7y ago

From the caveat list: many businesses may send workers home with pay instead of laying them off outright. Others may get some other benefit, like the friend of a friend who gets health insurance but no pay through the beginning of June. Not sure how it impacts unemployment benefits. I think the hope is that this thing will cycle through, the economy will recover (like after 9/11) and people can be brought back to the same job.

legitster 7y ago

What is happening to the US economy is completely unprecedented. The comparison I most hear is to WWII - but instead of pivoting to support sending people to war and supporting their needs, our economy is pivoting to sending them home. But as near as I can tell, we only ever sent about 10% of the population to WWII. This is 3x the hit of WWII! (I get that we don't have to make guns and tanks for people, just feed and house them).

viklove 7y ago
Instead of pivoting to support the needs of Americans, we're shoveling money into massive corporations. Obviously it's not the American labourer who needs help. No, it's the shareholders and execs who run big companies. I love this country!
- H8crilA 7y ago
  When even the investment grade (look up LQD; was recently bailed out by the Fed) gets beaten up like that you know that your money isn't safe anywhere. Not in any money market fund, not in your bank, not in any CD, not as "cash" in your brokerage account. I bet that most financial institutions are technically insolvent right now (or at least were, a week or two ago). Also, there's only so much the Fed can do, it really is just a bank that deals exclusively with other large players by sending pieces of paper around (or these days - data packets). That's it. The rest is up to the Congress, the Fed has already printed the money for them, and will surely print more if needed. Ultimately it's a medical emergency, not a financial one. It's up to the doctors and people in charge to help fix this mess. The "money people" are merely dancing to the spectacle.
  - samspenc 7y ago
    So I was piqued by your post, and actually looked it up. It looks like the bond / credit market in the US is just under $40 trillion [1], and the value of the US stock market is $37.69 trillion [2]. So they look pretty close? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_market [2] https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/ https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/

xiaolingxiao 7y ago

Is there a breakdown of retail and travel-industry related jobs, versus other categories?

thedance 7y ago
Yes. Consider, for example, any reason why Las Vegas should continue to exist.

H8crilA 7y ago

BTW, the St. Louis Fed has one of the biggest blessings for your "I can't afford neither Bloomberg nor Refinitiv" amateur economist. The amount of time series and the basic ability to do pointwise arithmetic operations is great! All series sorted by popularity: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/tags/series https://fred.stlouisfed.org/tags/series I wish other central banks (in other countries) stepped up to this amazing level.

yingw787 7y ago
Seconded. I (think? don't remember) I did Fed Challenge back in the day, and the econ resources I trusted most was Bloomberg/Economics, CNBC/Economics, and FRED by far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Fed_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Fed_Challenge
- baryphonic 7y ago
  I second that. When I did the College Fed Challenge, FRED was my team's go-to source, followed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and National Bureau of Economic Research. We had a little pipeline where we'd take their data and make nicer-looking charts in Excel that we could import into our slide deck. When I'm taking to laymen about economics, I still refer to FRED charts because they're so accessible and the number of series is enormous.

TheCowboy 7y ago

There's not enough pressure on politicians in both parties to ensure a solid and fast as possible recovery. It could end up that members of mostly one party in the Senate end up blocking most of these bare minimum measures. Look at what some European countries are doing as the minimum: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-economic-rescue-virus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-econo... Here are some (for the most part) good ideas that should be considered: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/coronavirus-economy-saez-zucman.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/coronavirus-econo...

tathougies 7y ago
America has given full unemployment plus extra money, plus free money. How is that different from privatizing payroll? Why is an 'employment guarantee' any better than what is happening in most of America -- layoffs with an explicit promise to rehire once the business is allowed to operate? It's not like paying companies to keep people on payroll in jobs that are not producing economic value really reduces unemployment anymore than not testing for coronavirus makes it go away. I don't know why americans are so afraid of 'mass unemployment'. Most businesses will survive this crisis, due to debt suspensions or new debt at a very low rate or via direct government aid (which the government has so far provided plentifully, and will likely do more). Businesses have promised to rehire. However, a business that cannot right now provide a job that has value to the business ought to lay off people and let the social safety net take care. The articles make some good points regarding healthcare, but aside from that, it makes no good argument why unemployment + the unemployment insurance that workers have paid into for exactly this scenario is worse than paying businesses to keep people on payroll who wouldn't be there otherwise.
- omegaworks 7y ago
  >I don't know why americans are so afraid of 'mass unemployment'. In the United States, health insurance is provided by your employer. To purchase it without their leverage is prohibitively expensive without a sizable, reliable income.

bmurray7jhu 7y ago

"Views expressed are not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or of the Federal Reserve System."

tempsy 7y ago

And yet stocks have rebounded 20% since Monday lows last week.

ccktlmazeltov 7y ago
You're looking at SP500, which are big companies that are going to be fine.
- gruez 7y ago
  All-cap indices (eg. VB) have seen similar rebounds, although they did rebound less than the large cap companies (SPY).

starpilot 7y ago

What is their track records for these estimates? Have they accurate in the past? My impression from GDP growth estimates is that everyone stays close to the average growth, but actual growth is apparently much more volatile in a random way. Similar with EPS estimates from stock analysts.