
US weekly jobless claims jump by 6.6M - itronitron
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/09/weekly-jobless-claims-report.html
======
brenden2
The 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
On 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.

~~~
_curious_
"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?

~~~
chasd00
what's happening is the result of a medical emergency and not the economy.
There's no financial reason or economic reason the job losses are so high.
It's still there, the demand is still there, we artificially halted the
economy and that generated the job loss. It's certainly not an on/off
situation but the job demand is still there and we can get back to work.

~~~
throwanem
This concept of an economy as some sort of Platonic ideal, disconnected from
the processes of the polity in which it exists, is very odd to me.

It seems like having your heart stop and saying it isn't a "real" emergency,
because the organs are all still there and ready to get back to work as soon
as oxygenated blood starts arriving again. Sure, that's true for a minute or
so, maybe two if you're young and healthy. After that...

~~~
chasd00
well take the analogy further, in this case to save the patient's life you
have to stop the heart from beating for a time but that doesn't imply the
patient has suffered a heart attack.

~~~
throwanem
In that case, the analogy is to open-heart surgery, which typically results in
significantly reduced capacity for a long time at best, and often permanently.
It's certainly not something you bounce back from quickly or easily, and even
if you're young and in perfect physical health, you have to be pretty lucky to
come back all the way.

Staying within the increasingly strained analogy, I don't think it is
reasonable to describe the US economy as "young" or "in perfect physical
health", or indeed even as anywhere close to either of those. This is more
like doing an emergency sextuple bypass on an obese 70-year-old with a
lifelong pack-a-day habit - even if the patient comes off the table alive,
it's going to take a long and careful period of physical therapy and recovery
to keep him that way, and he's almost certainly never going to recover all of
even the limited capacity he had before the crisis.

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strict9
Is 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?

~~~
beisner
I think we’ve known for a while that the stock market is not the economy. My
two cents:

1) Uncertainty is anathema to markets. At the beginning of the crisis, there
was a ton of uncertainty about how the disease would progress, what it’s
impact on supply chains would be globally, and how governments would respond.
In the last few weeks, the US has gotten a lot more information on how things
progress, “flatten the curve strategies” are appearing to work (which reduces
uncertainty), supply chains are still very strong and, for staple
goods/services, only minority affected, and the central banks of the world are
issuing a MASSIVE amount of short term liquidity to prevent credit crunches.

2) (this is a bit more cynical). I suspect the productivity of a huge number
of Americans, particularly in service roles, has disproportionately less
impact on the economic productivity of publicly traded companies. In other
words, many jobs are disposable without impacting the financial health of
companies in the stock market. Small businesses are being gutted, and so is a
lot of big retail, but it’s been too short of a time for those effects to make
a dent in how many of the publicly traded businesses are operating.

~~~
mercer
I agree with your comment, but I'll add that pessimistically, I feel that for
reality these 'service roles' might end up having a much larger impact that we
expect, and the discrepancy will have untold, unexpected consequences. A
crisis like this one might make us realize what truly matters. It also might
not, which at this point I'm half-expecting.

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shartshooter
_we’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
It 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...](https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/04/03/its-
a-sh-sandwich-republicans-rage-as-florida-becomes-a-nightmare-for-
trump-1271172)

~~~
sjg007
Maybe Floridians should vote in their best interest then..

~~~
ceejayoz
Floridians 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
Not 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_18...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_California_Proposition_187)

~~~
ceejayoz
> California's "let's check if people are illegal immigrants" amendment

That's a really disingenuous description of an amendment intended to "prohibit
undocumented immigrants from using non-emergency health care, public
education, and other services".

> Sure, it may have actually been unconstitutional...

It's funny that this is waved away as a minor issue, as if it weren't a _giant
difference_ between the two situations you're trying to draw a comparison
between.

~~~
DuskStar
I mean, that's a better description than calling it "Save Our State"... but
yes, the goal of the amendment was to reduce the services provided to illegal
immigrants. Perhaps I should have said "let's check if people are illegal
immigrants before providing non-emergency services", but too late to edit now.
Whether this is a good idea is very much in question, but that's also the case
for letting felons vote.

The "might have been unconstitutional" was a "no, this genuinely might have
passed muster in the courts if it was actually defended". What actually
happened was that an injunction was placed against implementation of the
proposition, and the state never appealed. Probably worth noting that the
logic used in the injunction - that it was unconstitutional on the basis that
it infringed on the federal government's exclusive jurisdiction over matters
relating to immigration - would also (IMO) prevent sanctuary cities from
existing, except that inaction is generally (and correctly) privileged above
action.

~~~
sjg007
You should look at how these clinics are funded.

~~~
DuskStar
Clinics?

------
bearjaws
Is 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.

~~~
jmclnx
The core ideas were reported upon, the real purpose is to bail out the banks
(once again) and the fortune 500 companies. Very little is going to the people
hardest hit.

~~~
miked85
This is false, the plan specifically targeted small businesses:
[https://www.sba.gov/page/coronavirus-covid-19-small-
business...](https://www.sba.gov/page/coronavirus-covid-19-small-business-
guidance-loan-resources)

~~~
techntoke
You mean the money being managed by the person Trump just fired?

~~~
techntoke
Here, would you like proof?

[https://www.latimes.com/world-
nation/story/2020-04-07/trump-...](https://www.latimes.com/world-
nation/story/2020-04-07/trump-upends-virus-oversight-removing-key-official)

------
geerlingguy
And yet, stocks continue their quick rebound.

~~~
brink
The virus will peak soon, quarantine will start easing, and the economy will
start to resume.

~~~
dota_fanatic
Why / 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
At 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_
Definitely 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).

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jonplackett
Is this much job loss happening elsewhere, like Europe?

~~~
kasey_junk
Yes. 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_
So how can reality be determined when employment has become such a facade?

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streetcat1
According 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
Unemployment 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
Agree. 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
The 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).

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drewlem
And yet the stock market goes higher...

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ykevinator
This is terrifying

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pearjuice
Doesn't matter since Jerome Powell nationalized the stock market and is just
printing money to inflate it. It's all priced in.

