Unemployment

Unemployment Skyrocketing? An Evolved Society Would Celebrate

December 15, 2020 Lee Camp, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Capitalism, Low Wage Workers, Systemic Racism, Unemployment

Leaf blowers are everything wrong with capitalism. . . . I’ll explain that in a minute. We all know times are irredeemably grim, and they’re only getting worse. The unemployment level in America seems to be setting the record books aflame, and for some bizarre reason those numbers correlate nicely with the number of Americans under 40 living with their parents again. Understandably, the entire country is a little on edge. If I spend more than 30 minutes around my parents, one eye starts twitching, a dull ringing settles into my inner ear canal, and I start to think Rachel Maddow (which they leave on 24/7 as if she’s Christmas music at Macy’s) makes some logical sense.

Losing Jobless Benefits Is Not Only Stressful

December 6, 2020 Avie Schneider, NPR. Educate! CARES Act, COVID-19, health, Unemployment

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown millions of Americans out of work — and over the past nine months, up to 20 million have filed for unemployment. Supplemental federal unemployment benefits of $600 per week — a lifeline for many — expired in July and more are set to go away at the end of the year if Congress doesn't act. But beyond the economic consequences, not having that financial safety net can lead to serious health problems for those affected, according to new research. Dr. Seth Berkowitz, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine who co-authored some of that research, says that in extreme cases, it may even contribute to deaths that are not directly caused by the coronavirus itself.

Five Key Takeaways From The November Jobs Report

December 6, 2020 Paul Wiseman, AP News. Educate! Bankruptcy, COVID-19, Recession, Unemployment

Washington, DC - Evidence was abundant in the November jobs report that the U.S. economy’s tentative recovery is sputtering as coronavirus cases accelerate and federal aid runs out. Hiring slowed sharply. Hundreds of thousands of people gave up looking for work. The proportion of the unemployed who have been jobless for at least six months rose. All told, the Labor Department said Friday, employers added 245,000 jobs in November — the fewest since April, the fifth straight monthly slowdown and well short of the gain economists had been expecting.

The Actual Effects Of Enhanced Unemployment Benefits

November 29, 2020 John Miller, Dollars and Sense. Educate! Jobs, Recession, Unemployment

No matter how hard they search, unemployed workers can’t find jobs that don’t exist. The major cause of today’s high unemployment is the lack of jobs, not workers who have stopped searching for work and have left jobs unfilled. By the end of July, there were still 11.1 million fewer jobs in the U.S. economy than there had been prior to the pandemic in January 2020. Renewing the FPUC supplemental unemployment benefits would boost spending and create jobs. Economist Mark Zandi from Moody’s Analytics estimates that $1 of renewed unemployment benefits would increase economic output by $1.64...

As Pandemic Aid Ends, Families Face Brutal New Year

November 29, 2020 Nigel Duara, Cal Matters. Educate! California, Evictions, Recession, Unemployment

California - In late 2017, a house fell on Jacques Gene. The construction foreman in Cool, east of Sacramento, was inside a half-finished home when the rolling trusses that make up the underside of the roof fell, collapsing the whole house. Gene, 46, suffered broken ribs, a punctured lung and a concussion. When his coworkers sorted through the rubble, he says, they didn’t expect to find him alive. But he found work again, earning $70,000 annually as a foreman to support his wife, their two kids and two children from a previous marriage.

Large Numbers Of People Still Filing For Unemployment Each Week

November 15, 2020 Jacob Crosse, WSWS. Educate! COVID-19, Public Education, Recession, Unemployment

For the 34th straight week, over 700,000 people filed for unemployment in the US according to the Department of Labor’s latest report. The 709,000 state claims coupled with an additional 298,154 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance brings the weekly total once again to over 1 million new claims. Nearly 67 million claims have been filed since mid-March as the worst economic crisis to befall the working class in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s leaves millions on the brink of destitution.

Unemployment Crisis Continues Unabated

November 13, 2020 Patricia Gorky, Liberation News. Educate! Joe Biden, Recession, Socialism, Unemployment

More than 1 million people filed for unemployment assistance last week according to new figures released today. 709,000 workers requested filled out applications for traditional benefits, and slightly under 300,000 applied for the specially-created Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. The Department of Labor’s reporting deceptively separates those who apply for standard unemployment benefits from those who apply for PUA. Similarly, official unemployment statistics only count people who have actively looked for work in the last four weeks.

More Than 14 Million May Have Lost Health Coverage

November 10, 2020 Samantha Liss, Health Care Dive. Educate! Health Insurance, Recession, Unemployment, Uninsured

In the latest analysis, researchers first tried to assess how many workers and dependents relied on job-based coverage as of March 2019. Then, using data from the Labor Department, they estimated how many workers lost jobs and how many of those had employer-based coverage. Researchers examined this information by industry, age and gender. Some industries were affected more than others and a few were almost spared entirely. "As a result, we would expect the number of people losing jobs with [employer-sponsored insurance] to vary greatly by industry, and possibly by other characteristics, such as age and gender," according to the report.

Calls For Universal Basic Income Increase As Government Support Fails

November 10, 2020 Jasmine Norden, The Canary. Create! Recession, Unemployment, United Kingdom (UK), Universal Basic Income

On 30 October, 520 MPs, councillors, peers, mayors and members of devolved assemblies, wrote to chancellor Rishi Sunak. They emphasised how current government support is leaving many families in poverty. In the letter, organised by UBI Lab Network, the elected representatives said: Millions of people have fallen through the cracks of the government’s support packages. The pandemic has left countless families facing poverty and extreme hardship. They added: With unemployment set to increase amid a shrinking job market, we urge you not to underestimate the wider costs to society of rising poverty and joblessness.

Hundreds Of Thousands Of Jobless People Are Being Asked To Repay Benefits

November 8, 2020 Ava Kofman, Pro Publica. Educate! CARES Act, COVID-19, Unemployment

Ahmad Ghabboun broke into a sweat. It was a late night in August and he had just discovered an unexpected $14,990 debt posted to the online portal he uses to access his account with Washington state’s unemployment agency. Since May, he had been receiving payments every week through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, newly established by Congress to support freelancers like him. The benefits replaced the paycheck he could no longer earn after the pandemic had grounded his work delivering packages for Amazon Flex and driving the occasional shift for Uber.

A Debt Reckoning Is Unavoidable

October 21, 2020 Aaron Karp, Waging Nonviolence. Organize! COVID-19, Debt, Recession, Unemployment

The late anthropologist David Graeber, who wrote about the 5,000-year history of debt, spoke about a strange paradox of being indebted. “The first effect of debt is to create isolation, shame, humiliation, a fear of even talking about it. On the other hand, if you look at history, the vast majority of revolts and insurrections are about debt. So in a sense it’s incredibly effective, ideologically, at isolating people. But once people overcome that isolation, the results are always explosive.” We may be heading towards such a moment.

Tens Of Millions More Expected To Lose Employer-Based Insurance

September 29, 2020 Julia Conley, Commondreams. Educate! Health Care, Health Insurance, Medicare for all, Unemployment

While for-profit health insurers have reported record-high earnings this year amid the coronavirus pandemic, small companies across the U.S. are reporting difficulty paying premiums for their employees—and tens of millions of workers are expected to lose their employer-based health insurance by the end of the year, even if they keep their jobs. The New York Times reported on Monday that although some small businesses were able to use funds from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to cover their employees' health benefits, nearly a third of employers reported to Harvard Business School researchers...

America’s Current Jobs ‘Great Depression’

September 11, 2020 Jack Rasmus. Educate! Economic Depression, Labor, Pandemic, Unemployment

“Two well-known and highly respected mainstream economists, Carmen Reinhart, a chief economist for the World Bank, and Vincent Reinhart, chief economist for Morgan Stanley bank, have recently published an article in the widely read capitalist source, Foreign Affairs, entitled ‘The Pandemic Depression’. Arguing primarily from a global perspective, the economists have concluded the US economy as of the 3rd quarter 2020 is not merely now experiencing a ‘great recession’ but now qualifies as another Great Depression.

Richard Wolff: The Declining Empire With Chris Hedges

September 4, 2020 Richard D. Wolff, Democracy at Work. Resistance Report Capitalism, Empire Economy, Unemployment, US Empire

On this week's Economic Update, Prof. Wolff discusses the following: Denmark's new taxes on banks and rich people to help workers doing dangerous jobs; West Virginia AG sues Walmart and CVS for complicity in opioid scandal; and US State Department urges universities to sell shares in Chinese corporations. On the second half of the show, Prof. Wolff interviews author and journalist Chris Hedges on signs of the declining US empire.

Health Insurance And The COVID-19 shock

August 30, 2020 By Josh Bivens and Ben Zipperer, EPI. Educate! COVID-19, Healthcare, Single payer health care, Unemployment

The inefficiencies and problems caused by the U.S. system of tying access to health insurance to specific jobs are well known. The downsides of employer-based health insurance access have been made spectacularly visible by the COVID-19 shock—a shock that has cost millions of Americans their jobs and their access to health care in the midst of a public health catastrophe. Delinking access to health insurance from specific jobs should be a top policy priority for the long term. The most ambitious and transformational way to sever this link is to make the federal government the payer of first resort for all health care expenses—a “single-payer” plan. The federal government already is the primary insurer for all Americans over the age of 65 and for households with incomes low enough to qualify for Medicaid. The advantages of a single-payer system are large, both in ensuring consistent access to medical providers that households prefer and in restraining the often-rapid growth of health care costs. The lowest-hanging fruit in the current crisis is to have the federal government pay all expenses for COVID-19-related testing and treatment. Given the historically rapid increase in uninsurance in the first months of the COVID-19 shock, policymakers should also allow all those without insurance to enroll in Medicaid, regardless of income, for the duration of the crisis.

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