Unemployment

A Week Of Mass Layoffs

August 29, 2020 Matt Ott, AP News. Educate! Layoffs, Recession, Unemployment, Workers

MGM Resorts is laying off 18,000 people as an unchecked pandemic leaves economic scars across a broad swath of U.S. industries, particularly those that rely on healthy crowds of people. The layoffs at MGM, which amount to about a quarter of its U.S staff of about 70,000, caps a wave of job cuts and buyouts this week across a broad array of industries. Economists warn that sizable layoffs will continue and any recovery is likely to falter as long as the virus rages and Congress doesn’t come up with additional financial aid for the unemployed, as well as desperate state and local governments.

Study: Return To Work Not Affected By $600 Unemployment Boost

August 9, 2020 James Myall, Maine Center for Economic Policy. Educate! Congress, COVID-19, Unemployment, Worker Rights and Jobs

There’s no relationship between expanded Unemployment Compensation payments and individuals’ likelihood of returning to work, according to two recent studies. One, by researchers at Yale University, finds that more generous UC payments are not related to lower rates of return to work. Another shows employers saw no overall decline in the number of applicants per job vacancy as a result of the increased payments. The findings refute the assertion by some pundits and politicians from both parties who claim the additional $600 weekly payment to laid-off workers established by Congress in March is a “disincentive to return to work.”

Economic Collapse, Pandemic: There Is No Plan (For You)

July 15, 2020 By Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Educate! COVID-19, Economic collapse, Recession, Unemployment

In the midst of an enormous, unavoidable increase in national unemployment, the $600 per week unemployment benefit increase that has sustained millions is set to run out at the end of this month, and is unlikely to be renewed at its current level, if at all. Eviction moratoriums are expiring, and more than 20 million Americans could be in danger of eviction in the next four months. Many small businesses, their resources exhausted, are closing for good, and bankruptcies of large businesses are accelerating. Millions have already lost their employer-based health insurance, and millions more will. At the same time that schools will be unable to reopen safely, a huge portion of private child care facilities are going out of business. And city and state governments will face plummeting tax revenue at the same time as they face a need for increased crisis spending, leaving the future of mass transit and other public services in doubt.

United States: Record 47.2% Of Working-Age Without Jobs

July 7, 2020 Shannon Jones, WSWS. Educate! Poverty, Recession, Unemployment, United States

According to newly released Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures, 47.2 percent of working-age Americans were without work in May, the highest level recorded since the end of World War II. The numbers are based on the BLS employment-population ratio, which states the proportion of the total labor force who are actually working. It is a more accurate measure of joblessness than the monthly unemployment report, which counts only those actively seeking work. At the end of May the employment-population ratio stood at 52.8 percent; it stood at 61.2 percent at the start of the year. The employment-population ratio reached a postwar high of nearly 65 percent in 2000.

Racism, Lack Of Jobs As Workers Face Social Pandemic

June 17, 2020 By G. Dunkel, Workers World. Educate! COVID-19, Racism, Unemployment, Worker Rights and Jobs

The capitalist class in the United States now wants to force unemployed workers to take a job, any job, no matter how dangerous or low paid. This attack on workers’ incomes drags down the economy because workers won’t earn enough to buy the goods and services they would normally consume. For those workers who should qualify for unemployment insurance (UI), the requirements vary. Income levels and time worked are usually prominent reasons given for not providing UI. Undocumented workers are almost always excluded. Even documented foreign nationals often have problems. It can take weeks to open a UI claim. Most states have underfunded their systems and haven’t had the staff, computer capacity or phone lines to handle the COVID-19 surge that began in March. Some jobless workers have waited 8 to 10 weeks to get the first payments on their unemployment claims. New York state supplies UI benefits on a cash card or direct deposit for workers who have a bank account that accepts such payments.

‘Misclassification Error’ Is Making Unemployment Rate Look Lower Than It Really Is

June 8, 2020 Jake Johnson, Commondreams. Educate! Jobs, Labor Department, Recession, Unemployment

Buried at the bottom of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' May jobs report—which President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers touted Friday as evidence that the U.S. economy is rebounding from the Covid-19 crisis at an extraordinary clip—is a note conceding that a "misclassification error" during the agency's data-collection process made the unemployment rate look significantly lower than it really is. BLS, a Labor Department agency staffed with more than 2,000 career officials, admitted at the end of its report that "a large number of workers... were classified as employed but absent from work." Those workers, the agency explained, should have been classified as "unemployed on temporary layoff" by household survey interviewers but were not.

Employers Are Behind The Rush To Reopen

May 22, 2020 Chris Brooks, LaborNotes. Educate! COVID-19, Reopen Economy, Unemployment, Worker Rights and Jobs

The federal government squandered the time the states spent in lockdown. We still face a national shortage of COVID-19 test kits and PPE and there is no nationwide testing or contact tracing program. The United States has 4 percent of the world’s population, but about a third of the world’s coronavirus cases. But some folks were not wasting their time. True to form, the rich are doing everything they can to benefit financially from the crisis—and their work is paying off. The richest 400 Americans were already worth a collective $2.96 trillion last year, more than the bottom 60 percent of Americans combined. Now many of the super-rich are poised to make even more during the pandemic—like the behemoth Amazon, which is propelling CEO Jeff Bezos even closer to becoming the world’s first trillionaire.

Pivot To Mass Struggle: A Lesson From Ferguson

May 21, 2020 By Ashton Rome, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! COVID-19, Ferguson, Unemployment, Worker Rights

Like the financial meltdown of 2007–08, the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression and a period of political radicalization, this period will dawn a new epoch in struggle. The transition to a new period of struggle is always difficult due in part to the changes needed to adjust to a new political situation and orient to new developments. The process of adjustment will involve discussion and debate within and amongst activist, labor, service groups, and others on the current situation, studying past struggles to discover insights that could provide guidance for activists today and deepening an understanding of capitalism and nature political struggle.

Redacted Tonight VIP: How The Virus Beat The US

May 16, 2020 Lee Camp, Redacted Tonight. Resistance Report COVID-19, Global Recession, Pandemic, Unemployment

Lee Camp sits down with Vijay Prashad, the executive director of The Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. They discuss how the US failed in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the growing cohort of working people who have been dubbed the 'precariat' because of their precarious employment, what people can do to help limit this crisis, and how foreign countries such as India and Cuba are handling the crisis. Naomi Karavani rips into the massive corporations that took all of the money from the small business loan program that was part of the coronavirus stimulus bill. This move illustrates why a capitalist system cannot solve a crisis that requires people to work together. Natalie McGill dips into a strange plague that struck the world between the 14th and 17th centuries.

Trump Administration Tells States To Yank Benefits From Those Who Won’t Return To Work

May 15, 2020 Arthur Delaney, Portside. Educate! COVID-19, PPE, Reopen Economy, Unemployment

Congress created special unemployment benefits so that laid-off workers could stay home while the coronavirus pandemic rages outside, but the Trump administration wants states to make sure that nobody’s getting benefits if they could be at work. The U.S. Department of Labor has told states, which implement unemployment insurance programs according to federal rules, that they should ask employers to notify the state if someone turns down an offer to come back to work. In a guidance memo on Monday evening, the Labor Department said “states are strongly encouraged to request employers to provide information when workers refuse to return to their jobs for reasons that do not support their continued eligibility for benefits.” The guidance comes as President Donald Trump is calling on states to lift restrictions on commerce so that the economy might get back on track ahead of the November election, even though the national death toll from COVID-19 is still rising at a brisk pace.

Low-Balling The Unemployed In The 2020 Economic Collapse

May 12, 2020 Jack Rasmus, Predicting the Global Economic Crisis. Educate! Economic collapse, Jobs, Recession, Unemployment

This past Friday, May 8, the US Labor Dept. released its latest jobless figures. The official report was 20 million more unemployed and an unemployment rate of 14.7%. Both mainstream and progressive media reported the numbers: 20 million more jobless and 14.7%. But those numbers, as horrendous as they are, represent a gross under-estimation of the jobless situation in America! One might understand why the mainstream media consistently under-reports the jobless. But it is perplexing why so many progressives continue to simply parrot the official figures. Especially when other Labor Dept. data admits the true unemployment rate is 22.4% and the officially total unemployed is 23.1 million. Here’s why the 20 million and 14.7% is a gross under-representation of the magnitude of jobless today:

Mass Unemployment Is A Failure Of Capitalism

May 12, 2020 Richard D. Wolff, Popular Resistance. Educate! Capitalism, Unemployment, Worker Rights and Jobs, Working Class

The difficulties caused to workers by record unemployment during the pandemic are a product of capitalism. Most of the time, employers decide to hire or fire workers depending on which choice maximizes employers’ profits. Profit, not the full employment of workers nor of means of production, is “the bottom line” of capitalism and thus of capitalists. That is how the system works. Capitalists are rewarded when their profits are high and punished when they are not. It’s nothing personal; it’s just business. Unemployment is a choice mostly made by employers. In many cases of unemployment, employers had the option not to fire employees. They could have kept all employed but reduced their hours or days or else rotated off-work times among employees. Employers can choose to retain idled employees on payrolls and suffer losses they hope will be temporary.

Covid-19 Is A Reason To Start The Green New Deal Now

May 11, 2020 Sarah Lazare, In These Times. Create! Green New Deal, New Economy, Recession, Unemployment

Our political leaders, Republican and Democrat, are leaving tens of millions of people in free fall. Instead of a guaranteed income and universal, single-payer healthcare, we are offered paltry, one-time checks and unemployment payments (for those who qualify—and many don’t, including all undocumented people). Epidemiologists tell us that people must stay home to curb the spread of the virus—yet, to do so, people need a consistent income, which most cannot achieve from home. We have been offered no road map for keeping bread lines—like the 10,000 families who showed up at a food bank in San Antonio—from growing ever longer. Even as there are no jobs, work is piling up. For example, any plan to safely emerge from shutdown also requires contact tracing, which involves mass testing to find people who have been infected with the virus, then tracking down and monitoring anyone they have come in contact with.

Update: Number Of Unemployed Now Over 30 Million

May 3, 2020 Economic Policy Institute. Educate! COVID-19, Pandemic, Recession, Unemployment

The number of workers applying for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits has risen to never-before-seen levels as a result of the coronavirus shock. In the last six weeks, nearly 28 million workers have applied for unemployment compensation. That is more than one in six workers, and over five times the worst period of the Great Recession. I should note that the Department of Labor (DOL) reports that 30.3 million workers applied for UI during the last six weeks on a “seasonally adjusted” basis, compared with 27.9 million on an unadjusted basis. Seasonal adjustments are typically helpful—they are used to even out seasonal changes in claims that have nothing to do with the underlying strength or weakness of the labor market, providing a clearer picture of underlying trends.

Trump Relaxes OSHA Rules And Governors Block Unemployment Benefits For Meatpackers

May 1, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Educate! COVID-19, Meatpackers, OSHA, Unemployment

Earlier this week, the Trump Administration issued an Executive Order to use the Defense Production Act to order meatpacking plants to remain open. Now, Smithfields is already using Trump’s Executive Order to attempt to block inspections of their plant. Fatima Hussein at Bloomberg has the story: The Rural Community Workers Alliance, which represents Smithfield workers in Missouri, is seeking an order to force the company to comply with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state public health officials, as well as other worker protection requirements, at a Milan, Mo., plant. Nearly eight plant workers already have been forced to stay home because of Covid-19 symptoms. A court order would allow the group to inspect the plant and would force the company to make certain safety changes. Calling a court order to allow plaintiffs to inspect the plant “unprecedented,” Alexandra B. Cunningham, with Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP in Richmond, Va., represented Smithfield at the hearing Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.

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