Over 10 Million US Jobless Claims over Two Weeks

Another 6.6 million jobless claims were added in todays report of US unemployment.

Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, says this is an underestimate because the systems are overloaded. Worse is still to come.

There is a study from Drexel, that unemployment increases your risk of death but recessions are good for your health.

Many studies of individuals have shown that employees who lose their jobs have a higher mortality rate, more comprehensive studies have shown, unexpectedly, that population mortality actually declines as unemployment rates increase.

The findings are that job loss is associated with a 73 percent increase in the probability of death – the equivalent of adding 10 years to a person’s age. However, this increased risk affects only the minority of people who are unemployed and is outweighed by health-promoting effects of an economic slowdown that affect the entire population, such as a drop in traffic fatalities and reduced atmospheric pollution. The researchers found that each percentage-point increase in the individual’s state unemployment rate reduces the hazard of death by approximately 9 percent, which is about the equivalent of making a person one year younger.

American Journal of Epidemiology – Individual Joblessness, Contextual Unemployment, and Mortality Risk, José A. Tapia Granados*, James S. House, Edward L. Ionides, Sarah Burgard, and
Robert S. Schoeni (Drexel University 2014).

The exceptional coronavirus situation has seen a massive improvement in air quality. There is less air pollution because 2 billion people are mostly not driving. This also has a massive reduction in traffic accidents and deaths.

There is a sharp increase in divorces.

There will need to be more done to prevent suicides, drug and alcohol abuse.

SOURCES – American Journal of Epidemiology, CNBC, BBC News
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

37 thoughts on “Over 10 Million US Jobless Claims over Two Weeks”

  1. Both are respiratory but I will take your word for it. Right now, we have a limited set of tools so we better make sure they work.

  2. SARS was difficult to catch compared to this so contact tracing actually worked. This is supposed to be quite a bit more infectious.

  3. Not true. SARS went away. A strong effective effort to get the multiplier below 1 and COVID goes away. The equivalent to herd immunity can be obtain if the best spreaders all get infected. Doesn’t need a significant portion of the population.

  4. I am more of a Socialist. But I do believe unfettered capitalism is dangerous since the foundation of capitalism is greed which is not sometime I would choose to build a society on.

  5. Social distancing only delays the curve, it does not prevent cases. The only possible way R-0 drops below 1.0 is herd immunity through infection or vaccination. The serological surveys are starting to show the disease was likely around much longer than we thought, and we are indeed hitting herd immunity irregardless of the illegal lockdowns.

  6. In a few months the worse will have passed. I think it has already passed in NYC. The rest of the country will follow soon enough. As for work, the first couple of months, they should do temperature checks and insist on masks and gloves. Rest rooms, elevator buttons, door knobs, etc should be sanitized at least daily. Tissue paper, hand stanitizer, and receptacles should be provided.

  7. Poor Luca, at least we North Americans will have food and fuel. I hope you got some fat on you … you may need it.

  8. It’s a cure for all the 60+ population that has created worthless bureaucratic jobs in every industry, mostly to create government debt. I say go spartan and give it intentionally to everyone over 60, see who survives with zero medical treatment.

    I should note, my father at 67 has recently survived COVID-19 (had a positive test and got some symptoms but beat it in a week), and Swine Flu (which I survived as well, terrible 5 days lungs still not the same). He said Swine Flu was worse.

  9. The Obama economy lasted 7 years, then Trump took over, increased the deficit 800 billion, added a 5-7% increase to the stock market over inflation (and the Obama level increases) due to stock buybacks from corporate tax cuts, and then called it a success.

    Meanwhile, even being the germaphobe he is, stripped the pandemic monitoring and response teams budgets 70+%. Then called Wuhan Flu a hoax.

    Then we got hit with the Wuhan Flu and now the US has little safety net (remember Trump asking for interest rate reductions by the Fed Res even though the economy was doing fine?).

    Granted there is one thing Trump knows how to handle, BANKRUPTCY.

    All the while, most of the governors are responding adequately and given little support from the federal government.

    Is Trump a great president, or the greatest? You tell me.

  10. The evidence from iyaly indicates that it wouldnt be 15% Higher, it would be roughly 800% Or even 1200% higher. But a 15% claim isnt looking at the facts on the ground. You forget things like how many of those hospitalized avoided needing a ventilator?

  11. China had a 5% save rate with ventilators and we are barely at 10-15%. If every single person no longer had access to a ventilator we’d have at most a 15% higher death rate overall. We are barely changing the overall outcomes. If 200k would die with full access to ventilators then complete ‘overwhelming’ would only add 30k to that. We’ve detonated the economy over a level of deaths that might not even breach the signal to noise ratio of yearly death variance.

  12. I don’t see how this number doesn’t get much bigger as other states start social distancing.

  13. Why is no one pondering that in short order, a two week disruption already decimated the current economic model we’ve based our civilization on? Preexisting unstable foundations? A naturally fragile and unresilient model? What? I’m of course thinking long term to the next global crisis. We’ll never get anywhere if the ant hill keeps getting kicked over.

  14. I was under the impression that the Japanese economy hadn’t had a good growth spurt since 1990.
    If so then “the USA isn’t as indebted as Japan” is damning with faint praise.

  15. The debt levels are fine. Japan has been running at a debt level about 3x ours. If the government didn’t try to spend its way out of it, the economic impact would be much worse.

  16. So Trump, how do you think he’s doing? Any buyers remorse? And if this is happening with a new virus, might climate change also sneak up on us? Nothing undermines one’s internal confidence more, than not being able to pay one’s bills.

  17. And while this is all going on, China may still reopen their wet markets like they did after SARS. These markets have been implicated in multiple pandemics such as COVID and SARS. If they do not close them permanently the whole world needs to tax any products coming out of or going into China to make it more painful to keep them open than close them permanently.

  18. And it would be much higher if the hospitalizations occurred all at once. I really do think the economic fallout could be worse though than the virus if this continues. Perhaps people can be allowed back in the workplace if they promise to wear masks and gloves

  19. This is the going to be the economic melt down of our lifetimes, the one that will define the behavior of the generations alive now. Even if our economy was sound before this event happened (which with the high debt levels we carry as a nation, it might not be,) it won’t be afterward. It looks the government is going to try to spend it’s way out of this. It can’t possibly succeed because the gap is too large and getting larger every day.

    On a personal note, my house is paid off and most of my retirement savings should survive (with a bite or two taken out.) Our jobs are secure. I’ll be working for a very well funded startup and my wife works in health care. I too put down a month worth of food. It seems to be way less than some other people’s idea of what you’d eat in a month but since I’m a programmer and not a lumberjack I guess that makes sense.

  20. The Spiral is called redlining. Get into a negative cashflow situation and you could never get out.

  21. If the number of people who need ventilator exceed the number of ventilator then those people are dead.

    The other thing about flatten the curve is that if done effectively then 100% of the population does not have to get infected. You can actually tamp down the epidemic to near zero levels.

  22. %1 percent for those under 60. Up to 20% for those over 80. Higher for male than female. Higher is you have diabetes, cardio-vascular issues, smoke, etc.

  23. The terms

    RECESSION and DEPRESSION

    have very specific meaning to both economists and the media. Neither of them determines the depth (loss) of economic activity by itself, but rather the loss or decline in economic churning over minimum lengths of time.  

    As Wikipedia well casts it: Depressions are characterized by their length, by abnormally large increases in unemployment, falls in the availability of credit (often due to some form of banking or financial crisis), shrinking output as buyers dry up and suppliers cut back on production and investment, more bankruptcies including sovereign debt defaults, significantly reduced amounts of trade and commerce (especially international trade), as well as highly volatile relative currency value fluctuations (often due to currency devaluations). Price deflation, financial crises, stock market crash, and bank failures are also common elements of a depression that do not normally occur during a recession.”

    Got that?  TIME and degree of recession → depression.

    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

  24. The point tho’ that I was making is the spiral effect.  

    My tenants, not paying rent.
    → our inability to pay mortgages
    → → and running up the credit cards
    → → → and inability to buy veggies, milk, fresh foods

    In turn, our grocery stores are getting slammed.
    → more shop-lifting
    → → more restrictions on how many in store at same time
    → → → decreasing quality of refrigerated foodstuffs.

    Likewise, churches are in a world-of-hurt. No Sunday tithes.
    → Church-operated schools, no income. Can’t pay the furloughed teachers.
    → → which can’t buy stuff, can’t pay rents, are living off shoestrings.

    Then come the government-mandated-not-to-operate businesses
    → can’t pay the employees
    → → with all that does to The Spiral

    Car makers … make me laugh. Endless advertisements. NO customers.
    → and I still get adverts from 5 different sea-cruise lines. Laughable.
    → → and banks offering the princely interest of 0.45% on savings accts.
    → → → and 2½ hour call-waiting lines on our banks’ cards’ services

    Our insurance carriers each sent notice that we will NOT be covered
    → if we don’t pay their premiums. 
    → → and may only recover partial payments if the shît hits the fan.

    No, goats.
    → this is not pretty.
    → → The spiral is NOT our friend.

    ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

  25. As D. Drake notes, the deep growing concern is that the Coronavirus response fiasco is going to lead to a run-away spiral of economic-activity quashing chain reactions. 

    As I noted, on a microeconomic scale, the loss of rent-income from the tenants of my wife and I are now challenging our family solvency. What we don’t get coming in, is what we don’t spend, going out. Nature of being on a fixed income, in this part of our life. (60+)

    Whether we get a government cheque or not, now we cannot pay OUR mortgage. The bank will be losing that income stream. Sure we can say blitheringly stupid things like “screw the banks”, but they too have their operations to fund, if nothing else. Last I checked, they had their lights on, auto-tellers working, staff in the offices, and drive-up kiosks functioning.  

    But what happens now that “going to the store” is all but an impossibility? We’ve got a month’s supply of condensed milk, dry cereals, 10 dozen eggs, 25 lbs flour, sugar, 5 lbs coffee beans, and a solar power-on-the-roof system that makes quite a bit more power day than we actually consume. This is good. We have hams, elk, venison, chicken, pork and sausages in the super-deep freezer. I’ve been preparing bulk-freeze-and-reheat things like Chile Verde, and Colorado; beef spaghetti sauce; I’ve made enough pie doughs for 25 pies. Quiche is an every-third-day affair.  

    Survivable for a couple of months. Not pretty. But not starving. ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

  26. The “official” unemployment numbers only reflect the number of applications processed by staff. They don’t include the number of applications staff haven’t gotten to, or the people who can’t get through by phone or online.

  27. In historic terms… we are not even in a ressession because when the economy suddenly stops and you have -25% GDP growth and 30% unemployment…that’s called a depression…. the US government should drew up contingency plans for the correct order to halt and restart the economy… it like putting a patient on Ice before brain surgery…. I would thing you should halt the credit market first before putting the economy to sleep for 6 months….

  28. Why is it that everytime the news and media makes a big deal about record low unemployment it’s a sign that a Sudden crash is around the corner…

  29. Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.

    A worldwide food shortage could occur if the coronavirus crisis isn’t handled properly, three global agencies warned on Wednesday.

    “Uncertainty about food availability can spark a wave of export restrictions, creating a shortage on the global market,” said a joint statement signed by Qu Dongyu, head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Roberto Azevedo, director of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

  30. And now the SPIRAL BEGINS

    To be frank, I have not been overly worried about catching CV19.  Statistically, it appears to carry an infectious mortality between 0.4% and 1.0% of a well-tested population that catches it. Worse odds than the ‘average flu’, but not a plague, not smallpox, not MERS or the truly nasty diseases of equatorial Africa and South America.

    Our biggest personal existential threat will be the spiraling of effects as the action we’ve taken works its way — without abatement — thru the economy. 

    For example, due to a bit of uncommon (but not rare) good luck, we inherited a small rental house on our property, as well as one in another close city. We have to share the income from these with … the government, the insurers, the fixit crew, the gardener and the mortgage lender.  And with my brother in law.  

    Both properties renters have failed to make their April 1 rent payment. 

    In order that we might perhaps be able to make a grant-claim on the State or Fed, we took care to be squeaky-clean (paid up to date, to the cent) on mortgages, taxes, insurance, etc. But now we have a many-thousand-dollar shortfall. 

    Which means, we cannot make our mortgage payments. 
    For all the properties. 

    Telling y’all: looking down the barrel of this spiral gun, is sobering. 
    Far more sobering than missing a credit-card payment or two. 

    ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

  31. We have become so accustomed to work with mega society macro numbers. That many people filed for unemployment, we respond to the crisis by flooding the market with that many trillions of dollars and increasing the national and global deficit by that many percents.

    Yes we are not looking closely enough on how it is translating to the real economy. The UN announced today that severe food shortages are expected around the world in the near future.

    We will soon realize that we could not have afforded to close the economy globally so tightly for so long to fight the virus.

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