
Jobless claims, total unemployment level worse than expected - Reedx
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/04/weekly-jobless-claims.html
======
mensetmanusman
Interesting note that during WW2 people expected another great depression, so
policy makers coordinated (GI bill, etc.) and we actually had an economic
boom.

We now understand much better how to tweak a country’s economy.

Some key points for the next recovery phase:

-Give tax incentives for automated robotic farming, our food supply should not be dependent on poor migrants, we need to transition to pesticide/herbicide free produce that can ramp up supply on demand. Workforce will be highly skilled as well.

-Make massive investments into local micro-grid community solar. This will make us more robust to cyber attacks and black outs and provide lots of jobs. Solar is now the cheapest power generation method.

-Ditto on batteries. Make 10 more gigafactories, invest in Lithium extraction from the ocean and recycling infrastructure.

etc.

~~~
petermcneeley
I enjoy how you suggest that there might be an social/employment problem but
then you proceed to suggest things that will actually eliminate employment.

~~~
throwawaygh
Resource extraction is extremely productive these days. What required
thousands of laborers a century ago can now be done with mere dozens of
laborers. Replacing coal/LNG with solar and batteries would be a net job
creator (and, in the case of solar, distribute the jobs more evenly across the
country).

Robotic farming is an interesting case. First, successful robotic farming for
labor-intensive crops would be a huge deal. Think John Deere v2. Tons of great
paying jobs. Try telling Moline, IL that tractors kill jobs. Second, most of
the jobs offset by a successful product in this space are migrant jobs; farm
workers enter the US for the growing season and then go back to (usually)
Mexico once the growing season ends. Without those jobs, the migrant farm
workers simply wouldn't migrate into the US. So, you'd eliminate jobs
globally, and Mexico in particular would suffer, but the overall employment
effect would probably shake out net positive in the USA (because most of the
displaced laborers aren't permanent residents).

Also, _not_ automating work for the sake of keeping people busy seems...
immoral.

~~~
petermcneeley
You bring some good points but I am more simply contrasting the suggestions
(tax incentives for business) with the actual GI bill (massive benefits for
millions of people)

~~~
throwawaygh
Right. So, what are "Ground Infantry" in World War Covid?

Apparently not nurses or farm laborers. Nope. Cops with zero accountability.
Not hospital workers. Not food producers. Police Union Memebership. All others
be beat.

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Avicebron
And the stocks continue to rise, I wonder how far this dead cat can bounce

~~~
AJRF
Q4 this year and Q1 next year just have to be bloodbaths this year - but then
again, I'm literally always wrong about this stuff. It really seems like I
should be right.

I say this because I think now that callbacks are starting slowly and lots of
offices have said Sept - Oct time will when they 'open the office' again
properly - the redundancies will be made before then - then belts tighten,
budgets get slashed, spending goes way down due to layoffs - and then Q4 and
following quarters will be abysmal.

I should probably buy calls on the S&P to be at record highs by year end
instead though because we live in clown world now.

~~~
ianai
We live in weird times. I too am shocked and constantly shown wrong by the
SP50 rising while many millions file unemployment.

I’ve read that part of the rise is from the Fed lower rates to 0. It
essentially pushed banks to buy into the market for their only sources of
interest.

I know from the past that company stock usually rises after they announce
reorganization. Investors may be seeing opportunities for profit down the road
from more optimized org charts following the mass unemployment.

I do believe Dr Fauci and other medical researchers comparing this to 1918. If
past is precedent we will see a far worse outbreak and economic fallout in the
fall and winter then we did this spring. If the valuation decrease were over
pessimistic this time around then next time may be more muted. If the decrease
prove to have been over optimistic then expect further devaluations next time.
Both of those assuming rational actors and reactions, neither of which
assured.

I also think we haven’t seen the full fallout from even the spring yet. I
think we won’t know until the end of august how all of the unemployment
affected rent and mortgage payments during the spring outbreak. We also don’t
know whether the protests are going to spark super spreader events. That could
necessitate closing the economy yet again and sooner. On the other side, we
don’t have a monthly stimulus or cancelled obligations-those could have up or
down impacts respectfully.

I see a lot of really grave uncertainty in the future right now. The pandemic
is a very real thing. The protests are too. The political desires to stimulate
the economy despite any other affects is perhaps greater still. So I think
there’s lots of noise and uncertainty here-which makes for volatility in
valuations.

Edit-I also just want to point out that the 1920s were marked by more than
just Black Friday in October(date?). I’d suggest we all go back and refresh on
how things played out back then to compare to today.

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selimthegrim
I thought they were expecting 8m (nonfarm payroll) job losses and saw
2.something in May instead.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/03/adp-private-payrolls-
may-202...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/03/adp-private-payrolls-
may-2020.html)

------
mpalczewski
Here's the official chart for continuing claims that the article references.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCSA)

The default chart does a good job of showing how severe this is.

Have to zoom in to the one year chart to get context around this week's rise.

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jl2718
> called back to work slowly What % would you guess are ever going to be
> ‘called back’?

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ericmcer
The 8 weeks from when the first PPP loans started going out is about to
elapse. Weird they don’t mention that at all.

------
chrisco255
The shut downs were a drastic overcorrection. I'll say it until I'm blue in
the face. In retrospect, we will look at it as a dire mistake that triggered a
great depression-like event.

~~~
moksly
We shut down fairly hard and fairly early in Denmark. Our neighbour Sweden
didn’t shut down at all. Their economy suffered roughly the same as ours, but
the number of deaths per 100,000 population is 43.9 and ours is 10.

We’re pretty much reopening everything that isn’t big concentrated gatherings
or night-clubs. Even things like Zoos are opening. Our border to Germany and
Norway is also semi-open now, but remains closed toward Sweden for obvious
reasons.

~~~
madspindel
We did shut down in Sweden. It's a myth that needs to be debunked. I (and many
others) have been working from home for several months now. All events (like
sports, cinemas) have been postponed or canceled. Most people in larger cities
are ordering groceries and stuffs online. Sweden is a very digital, even
cashless society. Sure, it's open in some ways but many stores are shutting
down because everything have went digital.

~~~
BlackNitrogen
The net effect was that the death rate was vastly higher in Sweden than their
northern Scandinavian neighbors. Over 4000 deaths more based on population
size. Not having more aggressive stay at home policies doomed thousands more
people to die than were likely if you had followed policies of your neighbors.
Sweden has now joined the ranks of the worst performing countries in Europe
based on death rate. The UK, France, Spain, and Sweden.

Here's the opportunity Sweden missed: The disease had an early outbreak in
those other countries, it was already raging before the countries shutdown
(Spain and Italy were overwhelmed). But as we saw in Finland, Norway etc, if
it wasn't raging, by shutting down you could tremendously reduce the
infections. I know Sweden tried to protect elderly in sr citizen homes as we
call them in the US, but you failed. People could still go out to bars and
restaurants, your economy was somewhat more functional that other countries,
at the cost of currently 3-4k extra deaths.

It's a terrible situation, but in my opinion the wrong one.

