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US weekly jobless claims jump by 6.6M
- jonplackett 7y agoIs this much job loss happening elsewhere, like Europe?
- kasey_junk 7y agoYes. Spain lost about 10% of its workforce in March. Italy is expected to go from projected 0.5% GDP growth to -3% (or even up to -10% by some projections). I saw one estimate that 60% of Italy’s manufacturing plant was shut down by COVID.
- _curious_ 7y agoSo how can reality be determined when employment has become such a facade?
- Leherenn 7y agoHere it's mostly "partial layoffs". Basically you're still employed and can be asked to work at any time (e.g. 40% on Monday, 0 until Friday and 10% on Friday). When not working, 80% of the salary is paid by then unemployment office. As far as I know, it means you cannot do another job instead, you're still on payroll. Though individual employer might show goodwill. As a result, "real" unemployment has barely increased, but about 1/3 of the workforce is on some kind of reduced hours (or their company has signed up for the scheme, though not necessarily reduced hours yet, it's not clear to me).
- bearjaws 7y agoIs the number expected to be this high? I thought one of the core ideas of the stimulus was to prevent firing by giving small businesses a "free" loan if they retained their employees? I've been trying to find a good authority on the economics of this stimulus but it seems I am always stuck finding the same "rehashed" news articles.
- lonelappde 7y agoStimulus takes a long time to "trickle down"
- rrtthu 7y agoPart of the stimulus is ensuring that unemployed people will get enough cash to live by. They increased the allowance by 600USD per week.
- techntoke 7y agoThat's really not that much. Won't pay for a 1 bedroom apartment in San Francisco, especially after gas and groceries.
- gd2 7y agoTrue even while gas is almost zero because not driving.
- mrfusion 7y agoUnemployment in FL maxes out at $275/week. Digest on that for a while.
- _curious_ 7y agoMaybe SF is not a tenable place to live anymore for ___%? Maybe they will be inconvenienced by forced relocation? Maybe no-one is entitled to continue living today the way they did yesterday?
- ModernMech 7y agoMaybe some people can neither afford to move nor live in their apartment and will end up homeless. The people having the hardest time living in SF are the people we now call "essential workers" and "heroes" for doing the jobs we all depend on to survive. What exactly do you think happens to the city of San Francisco when all the "essential workers" are forced to move away or are homeless?
- geerlingguy 7y agoAnd yet, stocks continue their quick rebound.
- brink 7y agoThe virus will peak soon, quarantine will start easing, and the economy will start to resume.
- dota_fanatic 7y agoWhy / how will the virus peak soon? Global population is ~7.8 billion and yet presumably only 10-100s of millions have caught it so far.
- ceejayoz 7y agoAt the rough 33% increase rate the virus is showing, 10 million is 20 in three days. 40 in 6. 80 in 9. 160 in 12. Social distancing is slowing that down a bit, but I suspect in the coming week or two we'll learn it's been spreading like wildfire in places like Florida and Alabama where they've been slow to clamp down on social activity. Exponential growth can be hard to wrap heads around. That said, I think "peak" is a misnomer. We'll have a bunch of peaks.
- _curious_ 7y agoDefinitely cyclical...and so will the economy which will make any economic recovery more drawn out and difficult as we experience more ups and downs in day to day life. Plus now we'll have a bunch of companies on the dole who otherwise wouldn't be in business/re-open and it will become even more surreal when the market can't sort out which companies are existing naturally and which ones are fully propped up (esp. if there is no oversight = impossible to track).
- mywittyname 7y agoAlso, we're not even testing for it broadly enough to really know how many cases we have. Current numbers in the USA are a rough educated guess.
- brenden2 7y agoThe Fed conveniently released an announcement about a new $2.3t free money program at the same time. The Fed's actions only serve to confirm what I think a lot of people already know: things are going to get really bad. It's a bit strange watching the stock market continue to pump knowing many of these companies have had their revenues drop by as much as 100%.
- twomoretime 7y agoOn the other hand, hasn't a lot of cash outflow been reduced right now too? I feel like we're putting the economy on pause. If we can survive in this state for another 3 or so months, there's a good chance things will quickly return to normal - or at least most companies will survive and start rehiring under a new normal.
- gonzo41 7y agoBlack Swan, 1:100 year event. It makes a lot of sense to spend the kind of money that you'd collect over two years of tax collection in order to support people through this. You can then recover that money over about the next 50 years. I think Australia is trying to do this on the cheap and kinda of stuffing it up. We're going to see a lot of industries collapse. Tourism is dead for 36 months at least and so is the higher education sector. It's going to be bleak.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- threatofrain 7y agoThere’s a good chance things will return quickly to normal? Where’d you get that from?
- _curious_ 7y ago"there's a good chance things will quickly return to normal - or at least most companies will survive and start rehiring under a new normal." Other than optimism and hope, what is your basis here?
- shartshooter 7y agowe’ve now lost 10% of workforce in three weeks I’m a little surprised it’s not higher. I assumed with bars, gyms, retail, house cleaners (and not to mention wait staff at restaurants) all out of a job indefinitely that those folks made up >10% of the workforce.
- strict9 7y agoIt is definitely much higher. Many states' unemployment systems are woefully inadequate. Florida (but probably other states too) intentionally made the unemployment claims system painful/impossible to navigate: >“It wasn’t about saving money. It was about making it harder for people to get benefits or keep benefits so that the unemployment numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.” https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/04/03/its-a-sh-sandwich-republicans-rage-as-florida-becomes-a-nightmare-for-trump-1271172 https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/04/03/its...
- sjg007 7y agoMaybe Floridians should vote in their best interest then..
- ceejayoz 7y agoFloridians are trying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_Amendment_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_Amendment_4 The legislature and Governor took a look at the 65% vote and went "nah", though, and put a bunch of new obstacles in place to override the voters.
- DuskStar 7y agoNot like Florida Republicans are the only offenders there. 59% voted in favor of California's "let's check if people are illegal immigrants" amendment back in 1994 [0], but then the incoming Democratic governor refused to defend it in court. (Sure, it may have actually been unconstitutional, but considering it's basically the opposite of 'sanctuary cities'...) Denying the public the benefit of politically inconvenient propositions is a long tradition in the US. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_California_Proposition_187 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_California_Proposition_18...
- strict9 7y agoIs the stock market connected to reality anymore? 16 million Americans lost their jobs in three weeks and in that time there's been a substantial rally. This can't just be short covering. What gives?
- ptero 7y agoStock market is volatile probably due to many factors, with HFT probably playing a significant role. That said, a jump in unemployment claims today is likely a non-event for stocks: it was predictable and as such already priced into the market. Markets are driven more by expectations 6+ months from now, for which you get the full spectrum of "90% become poor for many years" to "pumping more cash in, use inflation to deflate debts and go back to business as before". I suspect we will get something in the middle, but its just a wild guess. My 2c.
- sjg007 7y ago>Markets are driven more by expectations 6+ months from now If this was the case then we wouldn't have since the crash due to Covid-19.
- chasd00 7y agoduring the market crashes we weren't we looking at 100-240k dead in the coming months and that was considered "good"?
- sjg007 7y agoMy point is that people claim that the market has already priced in the next 6 months. This is not true.
- ptero 7y agoNext 6 months includes a lot of uncertainty in expectations which is, statistically, priced in. Those expectations may have a distribution which might make for a strange average response. For example, consider a bimodal distribution: 50% +1, 50% -1. The average is zero, but everyone that believes in this distribution believes that zero is highly unlikely. Thus, if there are big benefit for guessing right and little for guessing zero, the actions can rapidly oscillate, seemingly without major external information (just based on whichever of two almost-equally-likely outcomes seems likelier).
- pearjuice 7y agoDoesn't matter since Jerome Powell nationalized the stock market and is just printing money to inflate it. It's all priced in.
- drewlem 7y agoAnd yet the stock market goes higher...
- streetcat1 7y agoAccording to my calculation, minimum wage employees can now get twice in unemployment benefits (for at least 4 months) than his/her original wage. So based on that, even if the economy is open, I failed to see what would incentivize people to return to work.
- throwanem 7y agoUnemployment insurance payout per month is usually capped based on what you made at the job you had before you went on it. One assumes that will again be the case once the current crisis is considered to have ended. Unemployment insurance payouts are also time-bound. You don't go on unemployment and stay on it indefinitely; after a few months, barring a rare and hard-to-obtain extension, the benefit ends.
- streetcat1 7y agoAgree. So I assume that most of the unemployment is in the travel/hospitality/restaurants/retail (etc). Hence, even after the economy is open, it would be hard to get those people back to work until the "enhanced" benefits run out. I.e. I expect to see a lot of restaurants/hotels open but with no employees. Or, they will be employees, but their wages will have to be increased by 50%, which would cause runaway inflation. If this happens, this might lead to spike in automation (AI).
- IAmEveryone 7y agoThe industries you mention are unlikely to be amendable to increased automation. That’s why service jobs have grown over the last decade or so, compared with manufacturing. And paying supermarket cashiers decent wages isn’t going to create inflation because it doesn’t change the total amount of money in circulation. Productivity will just be redirected from building super yachts to poorer children’s school supplies (cliches for added clarity).
- _curious_ 7y ago"One assumes that will again be the case once the current crisis is considered to have ended." Let one not assume?
- ykevinator 7y agoThis is terrifying