The coronavirus

static111 said:

tempo_n_groove said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

Fucking ouch. The charts in the link are crazy. From WaPo:

The unemployment numbers are already so bad they no longer fit on the scales we’re used to. To understand them, we need to borrow scales from other types of jobs charts.

By the second week of March, the United States already registered job losses on par with the worst months of the Great Recession. About 701,000 jobs were confirmed gone, Labor Department data shows. As terrifying as that sounds, that number portrays the calm before the storm. In the final two weeks of March, after those measurements were taken, separate Labor Department releases show nearly 10 million (9,955,000) Americans filed for unemployment benefits.

We’ve never seen anything resembling that level of pain before. Back-of-the-envelope math shows there are more unemployed people in the country right now than at the Great Recession’s apex.

The previous all-time high for one week was 695,000 jobless claims in 1982. In the week tracked by Friday’s jobs numbers, the week ending March 14, there were 282,000 claims. The following week? It was 3.3 million. By last week, it was at 6.6 million. (These numbers are adjusted for seasonal variation, so that we can make historical comparisons).

Jobless claims are the only government data that comes close to keeping pace with the speed of the crisis. The unemployment-insurance system is at the heart of the government’s response to the pandemic, so it’s fitting that it’s the leading edge of its data.

But, like the system itself, the data has been flooded beyond recognition. It no longer makes sense to look at it in the context of previous unemployment-claims filings. We need to bring in other labor market numbers. In the chart below, we compare it with a few touchstones.

Greater than the Great Recession

From January 2008 to February 2010, the economy lost 8,705,000 jobs. The losses in that two-year period, among the most dismal in U.S. history, were likely eclipsed in the two weeks at the end of March.

Greater than the Trump boom

From November 2016 to February 2020, the economy added about 7,275,000 jobs. It’s a job-creation record that Trump highlighted early and often, despite it being at roughly the same pace as his predecessor’s second term. Unemployment claims numbers indicate job creation is likely already in negative territory.

Greater than New York

But it’s hard to grasp abstract milestones like those above, so we also compared the late-March losses to local labor markets.

If laid-off Americans were their own state right now, they’d be the third-largest, behind California (17.61 million) and Texas (13.02 million) and right ahead of New York (9.85 million). They outnumber workers in the 16 least-populated states combined.

Yes, but

Unemployment claims at this level are an enormous strain on the system and an unprecedented disruption for millions of U.S. businesses and households, but it’s also the system working as intended.

The new stimulus package signed into law last week, the CARES Act, made more people eligible for unemployment insurance and dramatically ramped up benefits to help workers and businesses survive a prolonged period of distancing. The goal of the bailout should be to keep as many workers whole as possible for as long as they’re home and stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, as University of Massachusetts at Amherst economist Arindrajit Dube points out on Twitter.

In normal times, an elevated unemployment claims number could be an early sign of trouble. This time, an excruciatingly high number means the system is beginning to help millions of people. But it nevertheless means pain and disruption for millions of Americans and their employers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/03/understanding-march-job-report/

Post this somewhere else too, this is huge.

Why isn't the billing on "pause"?  The country is.

All bills should be put on hold. Next 90 days no payments no interest.

That 1.3 trillion they spent on stimulus could have went to keeping the lights on in peoples houses and food being brought in.

Just a thought.

This is what I was worried about from the beginning. Unfortunately you have the American fairy tale of it’s your fault if you didn’t succeed enough to be ready for this pandemic to contend with.  The creditors and banks still want their obligations paid in full, though there are some exceptions.  Why the economy isn’t on a hard pause is astounding?  I guess some people need to make their dividends and keep up that unhealthy economic growth that was built on a house of cards on top of a shell game.

Smellyman said:

Never forget!

https://youtu.be/timvZTKr5HQ

brianlux said:

Fuck this virus.  Just fuck it.

23scidoo said:

tbergs said:

I'm not sure where to put this article so I'm dropping it here because it is a direct result of the pandemic. It's painful to see so much food go to waste at a time like this. I can't believe there aren't other options where they could at least find a way to save some production. This just further confirms my disgust for the dairy industry.

"It's just gut-wrenching," said Leedle, 36, as he stood inside his barn, with cows lowing softly as the animals were giving milk that would be funneled directly into a manure pit. "All I can see is that line going down the drain."

Leedle has dumped 4,700 gallons of milk from his 480 cows each day since Tuesday. The 7,500-member DFA told Reuters it has asked some other farmers in the cooperative to do the same but did not say how many.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-dairy-insight-idUSKBN21L1DW