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.
Further, unemployment benefits are managed by the states, and those states are running web services which typically see a few hundred hits a day. They are now trying to process tens of thousands of new records each day, and at least in MI the service is absolutely not up to the task.
My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully file, the rest are continuing to attempt to get the state web site to work today, while more people pile in.
2008 took months to unravel because of the nature of the crisis. Foreclosure is a process and in some areas can take up to 6 months or more from the time you stop paying your mortgage.
Here we had state governments practically shutting down their economies overnight. Overnight, every restaurant in my state was no longer allowed to have dine in. Only maybe half in my local area stayed open for carryout, and at least 80% of those have closed in the few weeks since.
The speed at which this happened is astronomical, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be multiple times worse than 2008. Just that the onset was very quick.
The financial crisis didn’t prevent most people from spending money on entertainment or eating out. People scaled back spending or went to cheaper places.
People are fearful and a lot of folks are supposed to be sheltering in place. Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference.
I was in the restaurant industry during the last crisis. Lots of places stopped hiring and slowed down but business didn’t suddenly stop.
>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.
You (and others) are probably aware, but worth pointing out that these people still can not currently file for unemployment benefits until the house passes the bill, the senate approves any house amendments to the bill, and the president signs the bill.
The house isn't voting on this until tomorrow at the earliest, so there's still a ways to go.
There's probably others as well that have had their pay reduced, that are waiting to see what's going to be passed before filing for benefits. Anecdotally I know of some software engineers in this boat.
Also doesn't take into account those who have had reduced hours or salary at their jobs, like my wife's entire company (at least the employees that didn't get furloughed at her company). She got reduced to 3 days a week, for a 40% salary reduction.
> 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1]
This should be normalized to be per-capita, comparing absolute figures is distorted by population growth. The US was only 230M people in 1982, 100M less than today.
> 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.
Not from the US, so not quite in phase with how things work. What can this tell us about actual unemployment and actual people that won't have a job now (short, medium or forever)?
I definitely know more people laid off this week than last week. No one was really sure how much business they could sustain with this whole thing going on, and now that there's been a full week and a partial week employers are starting to pull the plug.
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.
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.
Unfortunately yes. Even if one wants to keep the quarantine at all costs, it should be a political decision, not only medical, after weighing everything.
In Italy, where I'm in my third week being shut in, experts and doctors are being quoted tiredlessly by the news: the problem is that they're doing their job (which is good!) however they do not realize the impact of their suggested measures. Not their fault by any means, but:
a. They're effectively scaring the population (an WHO advisor here suggested 6-9 months lockdown, which is likely impractical and will have devastating consequences on the social fabric, even without thinking about the economy)
b. The politicians are so scared of the virus that they're completely abdicating their functions (in Italy the Parliament was closed for two weeks, and the judicial system has been completely shut down as well) and doing whatever they're being told.
As Bill gates said, we can't say- "Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner. We want you to keep spending because there’s maybe a politician who thinks GDP growth is all that counts"
The truth is that it seems our choice is relatively simple:
1) Allow the virus to spread rapidly, overload the health system, kill many people, until herd immunity is reached.
2)Do partial shut down measures, some partial efforts at testing and contact tracing, let the virus continue for a long time, and more slowly reach option 1.
3)Do strong shut down measures until the virus is able to be controlled by a strong testing+contact tracing regime.
Iran (seems to have?) chosen option 1.
Italy started with option 2, and will hopefully move into option 3.
Option 3 is the only acceptable option that doesn't destroy the economy and health systems.
Unchecked, 10 cases of this virus will turn into 100s of thousands. That is the same with 10 cases in March, or 10 cases in May or 10 cases in any month.
I think it's a fair discussion to take, but how are you going to run an economy with the health service in permanent overload?
That is what would happen if you just let the thing pass. Those charts of "squashing the sombrero" have the number of beds at a very low place compared to the expected hump of cases. On some of them you can barely even see the gap between the red line and the zero line, due to the scale of the hump.
Death rates would shoot up way above what is normal for the disease, people would die of all sorts of other preventable things too.
For those who are willing to go through this thought exercise, if we're purely trying to maximize humankind's total well-being, how much wealth would we have to create to counteract one coronavirus victim's loss of life?
Here's a set of 3 questions that I think leads to a possible answer.
- How much would someone have to pay you to be put to sleep for 8 years, during which period you have no sensory input or output?
- Would you rather be put to sleep for 8 years now or at the end of your life?
- Do you have a preference over being put to sleep for the last 8 years of your life vs just dying straight up?
I think most people would be willing to go to sleep for 8 years for $2 million. And, most would prefer dying 8 years sooner over going to sleep now.
In other words, $2m > sleep for 8 years now > dying 8 years earlier == coronavirus victim
The moral dilemma is that we're asking one person to die 8 years sooner to create an outbalanced improvement in quality of life increase for someone else. That is, you're taking away well-being from one person to give to another. I think government officials implement policies that redistribute human well-being all the time, but it raises alarm bells when we start dealing with life and death.
Each country has economic and market mitigations. Some are beginning to copy US model of Gov paying bills outright for a period. If everyone can do this with low cost, there's no reason for high risk and damage to economy later. This incident will make us learn fast.
The medical experts do consider economic and market impacts, and there are alignments in governments how to balance everything. However, since this is an unprecedented health crisis with unknown ramifications, that is first priority. Many measures are to create wiggling room to handle what unknown unknowns may come down the road as well.
This shows us systemic vulnerabilities, and societies will be forever changed, probably for the better.
Cash flow, supply chains, jobs, bankruptcy, debt, poverty, famine and more than likely families breaking up (financial stress is the #1 cause of divorce) plus a spike in suicides.
That's the economic impact. And when the question of virtually guaranteeing that outcome around the world to a significant portion of the global population vs a risk of a negative outcome for for the percentage of people who are susceptible to serious issues from COVID-19...it gets a heck of a lot murkier.
There's not a heartless bad guy in this situation. Both outcomes are terrible and if you purely look at the number of people negatively impacted, the economic fallout of this approach with its cascading effects look significantly worse.
This boils down to the reality that governments can take measures to mitigate the economic damage caused by an idled labor force (direct payments to workers), but can do very little to mitigate the economic damage caused by a sick or dying labor force.
Most wealthy nations already have a robust social safety net in place. They don't need to rush to cobble together a temporary one in the same was the US does.
I saw this idea floated around on Reddit a few days ago. Basically the crux is that unemployment has a death toll, too.
So if you close all non-essential businesses, unemployment rises, which increases the likelihood of people losing health insurance, losing homes, not paying electrical bills, communication (internet / phone) bills, etc. If some people lose all those things and don't have access to them again for 2+ months, and have no other safety net, they might die. Doubly so considering the hospitals may be at capacity with COVID-19 cases.
So, what would be better - keep people at home and unemployed, where people die by lack of resources, or keep people going out where people die by spreading COVID-19?
The third options is to keep people at their residences but either pay them or reduce their bills / mortgages etc to 0 while COVID-19 blows over. But that could take 2-18 months. It was hard enough getting $1200 once for every American household - I doubt it will continue for another 18 months until a vaccine is developed.
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?
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.
> 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.
Check out the details of the small business forgivable loan package just passed by the Senate. I think they took some actions to help sole proprietors and self-employed people also.
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
This is the first week when the managers/companies started to pay attention to what is happening.
Small companies are going to lay people off this week/next week. Mass layoffs take time as a lot of states have something like a WARN act.
One should also remember that most of tipped restaurant industry gets tips on credit cards which are included in the next weekly/bi-weekly paychecks, which means people had money coming the week of lock down/last week. It is this weeek/next week's paychecks will have nothing in them.
Here's how you know we are starting to accept reality: Uber and Lyft miss the revenue numbers; at least one of the on demand delivery services abruptly closes. Ordering food at the markups of DoorDash/Postmates/UberEats/Grubhub is denial.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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!
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.
[+] [-] stupandaus|6 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] luma|6 years ago|reply
My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully file, the rest are continuing to attempt to get the state web site to work today, while more people pile in.
These numbers are going to get much, much worse.
[+] [-] pc86|6 years ago|reply
Here we had state governments practically shutting down their economies overnight. Overnight, every restaurant in my state was no longer allowed to have dine in. Only maybe half in my local area stayed open for carryout, and at least 80% of those have closed in the few weeks since.
The speed at which this happened is astronomical, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be multiple times worse than 2008. Just that the onset was very quick.
[+] [-] wil421|6 years ago|reply
People are fearful and a lot of folks are supposed to be sheltering in place. Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference.
I was in the restaurant industry during the last crisis. Lots of places stopped hiring and slowed down but business didn’t suddenly stop.
[+] [-] nck4222|6 years ago|reply
You (and others) are probably aware, but worth pointing out that these people still can not currently file for unemployment benefits until the house passes the bill, the senate approves any house amendments to the bill, and the president signs the bill.
The house isn't voting on this until tomorrow at the earliest, so there's still a ways to go.
There's probably others as well that have had their pay reduced, that are waiting to see what's going to be passed before filing for benefits. Anecdotally I know of some software engineers in this boat.
[+] [-] cableshaft|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pengaru|6 years ago|reply
This should be normalized to be per-capita, comparing absolute figures is distorted by population growth. The US was only 230M people in 1982, 100M less than today.
After normalizing it's more like 3.9x.
[+] [-] claudeganon|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mikorym|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rixrax|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sct202|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] neycoda|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rubber_duck|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] lbeltrame|6 years ago|reply
In Italy, where I'm in my third week being shut in, experts and doctors are being quoted tiredlessly by the news: the problem is that they're doing their job (which is good!) however they do not realize the impact of their suggested measures. Not their fault by any means, but:
a. They're effectively scaring the population (an WHO advisor here suggested 6-9 months lockdown, which is likely impractical and will have devastating consequences on the social fabric, even without thinking about the economy)
b. The politicians are so scared of the virus that they're completely abdicating their functions (in Italy the Parliament was closed for two weeks, and the judicial system has been completely shut down as well) and doing whatever they're being told.
[+] [-] tuna-piano|6 years ago|reply
As Bill gates said, we can't say- "Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner. We want you to keep spending because there’s maybe a politician who thinks GDP growth is all that counts"
The truth is that it seems our choice is relatively simple:
1) Allow the virus to spread rapidly, overload the health system, kill many people, until herd immunity is reached.
2)Do partial shut down measures, some partial efforts at testing and contact tracing, let the virus continue for a long time, and more slowly reach option 1.
3)Do strong shut down measures until the virus is able to be controlled by a strong testing+contact tracing regime.
Iran (seems to have?) chosen option 1.
Italy started with option 2, and will hopefully move into option 3.
Option 3 is the only acceptable option that doesn't destroy the economy and health systems.
Unchecked, 10 cases of this virus will turn into 100s of thousands. That is the same with 10 cases in March, or 10 cases in May or 10 cases in any month.
[+] [-] lordnacho|6 years ago|reply
That is what would happen if you just let the thing pass. Those charts of "squashing the sombrero" have the number of beds at a very low place compared to the expected hump of cases. On some of them you can barely even see the gap between the red line and the zero line, due to the scale of the hump.
Death rates would shoot up way above what is normal for the disease, people would die of all sorts of other preventable things too.
[+] [-] smallgovt|6 years ago|reply
Here's a set of 3 questions that I think leads to a possible answer.
- How much would someone have to pay you to be put to sleep for 8 years, during which period you have no sensory input or output?
- Would you rather be put to sleep for 8 years now or at the end of your life?
- Do you have a preference over being put to sleep for the last 8 years of your life vs just dying straight up?
I think most people would be willing to go to sleep for 8 years for $2 million. And, most would prefer dying 8 years sooner over going to sleep now.
In other words, $2m > sleep for 8 years now > dying 8 years earlier == coronavirus victim
The moral dilemma is that we're asking one person to die 8 years sooner to create an outbalanced improvement in quality of life increase for someone else. That is, you're taking away well-being from one person to give to another. I think government officials implement policies that redistribute human well-being all the time, but it raises alarm bells when we start dealing with life and death.
[+] [-] _y5hn|6 years ago|reply
The medical experts do consider economic and market impacts, and there are alignments in governments how to balance everything. However, since this is an unprecedented health crisis with unknown ramifications, that is first priority. Many measures are to create wiggling room to handle what unknown unknowns may come down the road as well.
This shows us systemic vulnerabilities, and societies will be forever changed, probably for the better.
[+] [-] brightball|6 years ago|reply
I often hear it framed as: "How much is a person's life worth?" or some general reference to stock values.
But when people say "economy" this is what it really means:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52002734
Cash flow, supply chains, jobs, bankruptcy, debt, poverty, famine and more than likely families breaking up (financial stress is the #1 cause of divorce) plus a spike in suicides.
That's the economic impact. And when the question of virtually guaranteeing that outcome around the world to a significant portion of the global population vs a risk of a negative outcome for for the percentage of people who are susceptible to serious issues from COVID-19...it gets a heck of a lot murkier.
There's not a heartless bad guy in this situation. Both outcomes are terrible and if you purely look at the number of people negatively impacted, the economic fallout of this approach with its cascading effects look significantly worse.
[+] [-] danans|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfusion|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] standardUser|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamuelAdams|6 years ago|reply
So if you close all non-essential businesses, unemployment rises, which increases the likelihood of people losing health insurance, losing homes, not paying electrical bills, communication (internet / phone) bills, etc. If some people lose all those things and don't have access to them again for 2+ months, and have no other safety net, they might die. Doubly so considering the hospitals may be at capacity with COVID-19 cases.
So, what would be better - keep people at home and unemployed, where people die by lack of resources, or keep people going out where people die by spreading COVID-19?
The third options is to keep people at their residences but either pay them or reduce their bills / mortgages etc to 0 while COVID-19 blows over. But that could take 2-18 months. It was hard enough getting $1200 once for every American household - I doubt it will continue for another 18 months until a vaccine is developed.
[+] [-] sundaeofshock|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qqssccfftt|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] smileysteve|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dpcan|6 years ago|reply
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|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] avalys|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vsareto|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wpietri|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notyourday|6 years ago|reply
This is the first week when the managers/companies started to pay attention to what is happening.
Small companies are going to lay people off this week/next week. Mass layoffs take time as a lot of states have something like a WARN act.
One should also remember that most of tipped restaurant industry gets tips on credit cards which are included in the next weekly/bi-weekly paychecks, which means people had money coming the week of lock down/last week. It is this weeek/next week's paychecks will have nothing in them.
Here's how you know we are starting to accept reality: Uber and Lyft miss the revenue numbers; at least one of the on demand delivery services abruptly closes. Ordering food at the markups of DoorDash/Postmates/UberEats/Grubhub is denial.
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csomar|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] PaulRobinson|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ian0|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bearjaws|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] est31|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pupdogg|6 years ago|reply
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/
2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the...
3. https://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/us/
[+] [-] hopfog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yurlungur|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cjslep|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dubcanada|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] poidos|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottLobster|6 years ago|reply
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMCURRENT
[+] [-] NamTaf|6 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] MisterBastahrd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donquichotte|6 years ago|reply
Hopefully this won't discourage governments from taking appropriate action once a more lethal pandemic comes.