Jobless claims piled up for a fifth consecutive week in the US, data out Thursday showed.
In addition to the nearly 185,000 lives COVID-19 has claimed globally, the virus has taken 26.5 million American jobs.
That figure is staggering. It effectively erases the total job creation over the course of the entire expansion (the longest in US history) – plus five million lost jobs.
Read more: America’s Unemployment Nightmare Continues As Virus Claims 26.5 Million Jobs
Obviously, one can extrapolate and otherwise work with the numbers to create a smorgasbord of alarming statistics, but, as I’ve been keen to emphasize, these aren’t just statistics – they are people.
Of course, there’s always a connection between economic data and people. But data on jobless claims provides a near real-time (there’s a lag, but nowhere near that seen in the monthly payrolls report) assessment of the direct impact of a given downturn. One jobless claim equals one person filing. No complex math is needed.
Given that, it’s worth delving a bit further into what these figures actually mean, in the grand scheme of things.
“It is clear that while the initial wave of job losses were concentrated in retail and hospitality due to the shutdowns, it is spreading to suppliers and to other industries”, ING wrote Thursday, in an e-mailed note. ‘Terrible manufacturing surveys point to job losses and the business service sector is certainly not going to be immune”, the bank added.
Remember, Empire manufacturing and the Philly Fed recently staged tumbles so large that it was difficult to wrap one’s brain around the headlines.
ING continues, noting that due to the survey period, today’s claims numbers will actually be more relevant for the May jobs report (as opposed to the April vintage), published in early June.
Now, with that in mind, consider this, from the same ING note:
If we assume unemployment has risen 20 million in April, that would push the unemployment rate to around 16%. An additional 10 million unemployed in May and we are looking at an unemployment rate of around 22%. Thankfully this is below the 24.9% peak experienced in 1933, but we have to remember that one third of Americans aged 18-65 are not classified as employed or unemployed — they are students, early retirement, homemakers, carers or sick.
The read through from that, ING laments, is that “less than half of working age Americans will be earning a wage next month”.
The bank calls it “yet another sobering statistic”, before ominously noting that “in an election year, this means that the call for politicians to re-open the economy is only going to get louder, irrespective of the health advice”.
“less than half of working age Americans will be earning a wage next month” -> At least they can just buy TSLA on their Robinhood accounts and ride it into the sunset, thanks to the Fed
Trump, May 2016: “You’ll say ‘Please, Mr. President, we beg you sir, we don’t want to win anymore. It’s too much.”
Ok, I surrender, Mr President, you were right. I am begging you not to “win” anymore. 26.5 million jobs lost is indeed too much.
To be fair, this is one time when it really isn’t his fault.
Without Covid or Russia things were slowing. The hope for a V-shaped recovery is out the window and that he can now be faulted with. We needed unity to pull that one off.
Fault? No. Abdicated Responsibility to Lead? 100%
The existence of the virus wasn’t his fault. But his response to it or lack thereof was/is.
Yet the market bulls who have the luxury of working from home are growing more convinced we will be headed toward new highs by year-end. If only I could perpetually view the world through rose-colored lenses.
Lets see if Trump can put this back together better than it was. If he can not, hello Biden’s VP.
“This” refers to our economy and what the government does/ does not provide to Americans.
USA really needs a smart long term vision from President and Congress….. Oh well.
I can put a lot of it on Trump. A great deal of it. After inauguration he made mistake after mistake. Bad personnel choices, bad foreign policy choices, bad domestic policy choices. All of that fed into the chroney tax cuts that took advantage of the wage earner. He made weaknesses out of our strengths.
So a virus comes along and exposes our weaknesses instead of pushing our narrative. This outcome is directly due to trumps policy of chaos. He is not a three moves ahead of you guy, he is it does not matter what move I make guy/ I own the board the table the room and at least one third of this country’s souls. We would have been better off by a material margin had any other person won the office. The magnitude of the impact of the virus is his fault by what multiple, history can only guess.
True dat.
While the virus itself cannot be blamed on Trump, his bungled Response to it can.
Had he reacted swiftly and decisively (you know, “presidential”), lifes and jobs could have been saved.
The number jobless claims would of course still be horrendous, but most certainly not as high.
Heck, even if they would only be 5 % lower, that still amounts to 1.3 MILLION people.
That’s a LOT.