20 ms·

A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce.

A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] 4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment since they were not covered prior to the passing of the senate bill last night. This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA

claudeganon 6y ago
> This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel. I think we need to couple the two events a little more closely. The 2008 Financial Crisis accelerated inequality, political instability, asset inflation, and the rise of precarious work to such a degree that the damage of this hit is being greatly compounded. To my mind, the hole that was the 2008 crisis was papered over and someone just came by and dropped a brick on it.
- TheNorthman 6y ago
  The former Minister of Finance in greece and current MP Yanis Varoufakis has made the same connection [0]. He argues that it's the same crisis, but that the crisis has transformed, so that the solution can't be the same as in 2008. E.g. the ability of China to offer massive renminbi-swaps is set into question because they are being hit hard by this crisis. The weren't hit during 2008. He also questions whether the US will be willing to offer the same condition-less USD-swaps. [0]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OLfHpvJKNg0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=OLfHpvJKNg0 is an interview where he explains his position.
- malandrew 6y ago
  > the rise of precarious work I'm not going to disagree that there was a rise in precarious work, but I think many people don't realize how valuable having this work as option is. Brazil has been economically struggling for almost a decade now, which is the same decade when this type of work appeared. For many people in Brazil this has been a godsend. It's provided an employment option where previously there would have been none. The option wasn't between precarious work and non-precarious work. It was between precarious work and no work. Precarious work at least lets workers get back on the work ladder and just being on the ladder makes it easier to grab the next rung on the ladder and pull themselves up. It's especially valuable that the precarious work also tends to be flexible. This lets people study for new skills and go to interviews, which is something much harder to do with scheduled work. The economic situation in Brazil would have been far worse if another million or more people doing this precarious work had been unemployed for the last decade instead.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    It's not that simple, because up to some point, precarious work outcompetes non-precarious work, reducing the later one. You will see all kinds of arguments and researches, but actually nobody is really sure about what that point is, and if it is a net positive or negative for workers. To make it worse, Brazil is in a kind of unique situation because official work is extremely regulated, while precarious work is well accepted and widespread (and not as new as you think), so one can not even apply the lessons from most of the world.
wil421 6y ago
The financial crisis didn’t prevent most people from spending money on entertainment or eating out. People scaled back spending or went to cheaper places. People are fearful and a lot of folks are supposed to be sheltering in place. Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference. I was in the restaurant industry during the last crisis. Lots of places stopped hiring and slowed down but business didn’t suddenly stop.
- duxup 6y ago
  >Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference. Yeah I've been doing a fair amount of takeout and places where you had dozens of people ... operating with two or three people now.
  - alharith 6y ago
    My brother is a restaurant owner and reports that despite volume being down, profit is up due to less overhead. Others in the restaurant industry are reporting the same. When we come out on the other side of this, I think a lot of businesses are going to rethink a lot of things they held on to as infallible truths. Sorry as many mentioned, yes the key ingredient is takeout: This is a fast casual italian / pizza restaurant. I find fast casual restaurants doing just fine in my area. It's traditional sit downs that are struggling.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      Is the change something that can be stabilized? Or when people have the option to eat out again, will delivery-only restaurants suffer too much from competition with eat-in restaurants? (Assuming there's some level of customer preference for eating in?) Now I'm curious about pizza places. Most pizza places offer seating. But I feel like Domino's might in fact be delivery-only.
    - duxup 6y ago
      I think fast casual already did that and going say delivery only ... might be a dead end for most small businesses. Especially as folks get out of their homes and WANT to be out and about ;)
sct202 6y ago
I definitely know more people laid off this week than last week. No one was really sure how much business they could sustain with this whole thing going on, and now that there's been a full week and a partial week employers are starting to pull the plug.
luma 6y ago
Further, unemployment benefits are managed by the states, and those states are running web services which typically see a few hundred hits a day. They are now trying to process tens of thousands of new records each day, and at least in MI the service is absolutely not up to the task. My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully file, the rest are continuing to attempt to get the state web site to work today, while more people pile in. These numbers are going to get much, much worse.
- alexpetralia 6y ago
  I confirmed that the state's unemployment website has slowed to a crawl (if it is working at all).
- Demiurge 6y ago
  As a developer I immediately though of the power of queues. Twenty people trying to submit same form does not work for everyone, but a queue processing one person at a time might allow the twenty people to submit within a short time. It is flattening the curve! If I was contracted to fix this ASAP, I would set up an nginx front-end proxy config that doesn't allow more than X sessions and suggest a time in the future when they could try again.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    The matching UK system has a (huge) queue in it: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480546/Huge-queues-for-Universal-Credit-online-applications-due-to-coronavirus-surge https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480546/Huge-queues-fo...
    - Demiurge 6y ago
      Is there a human factor in processing these?
  - jkaljundi 6y ago
    In related news on Queue-it: https://tech.eu/brief/queue-it-funding/ https://tech.eu/brief/queue-it-funding/
mikorym 6y ago
Not from the US, so not quite in phase with how things work. What can this tell us about actual unemployment and actual people that won't have a job now (short, medium or forever)?
- nerdponx 6y ago
  Hard to say. Some of them might still be employed but with zero pay, others might have been laid off, and for others their employers just folded the business.
- cloverich 6y ago
  Most businesses do not have capacity to pay workers and rather than hold out, some are terminating immediately so their employees can claim unemployment benefits. I know for example of Dental offices (which in Texas are mandated closed until April 21st I believe) are doing this, but have every intention of re-hiring the same staff the moment they are allowed to re-open. I'm not sure this is the typical case, but its certainly a subset.
  - rdslw 6y ago
    I have to say, agressiveness of USA capitalism is shocking to watch. moral bonus: ability to 'explain' it that is just because you can claim unemployment benefit.
    - mikorym 6y ago
      Just my personal opinion here, but one should be careful to view the pandemic through the socialism vs. capitalism lens. I think it's better to focus on the particulars of events rather classifying them as in on of the two camps.
pc86 6y ago
2008 took months to unravel because of the nature of the crisis. Foreclosure is a process and in some areas can take up to 6 months or more from the time you stop paying your mortgage. Here we had state governments practically shutting down their economies overnight. Overnight, every restaurant in my state was no longer allowed to have dine in. Only maybe half in my local area stayed open for carryout, and at least 80% of those have closed in the few weeks since. The speed at which this happened is astronomical, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be multiple times worse than 2008. Just that the onset was very quick.
- rmrm 6y ago
  The biggest risk stated in 2008 was contagion to "main street" economy, which did eventually occur to some degree. This virus and fallout went directly to the main street economy (of the entire world at same time) and stopped it cold. I think its entirely unknown what the ultimate ramifications are of this cold stop to the world economy. But I see no reason to think its not bigger than 2008.
- sciencewolf 6y ago
  This is huge. It may be a months of jobless claims compacted into a week.
  - tibbydudeza 6y ago
    Also the knockon effect on landlords ... many bossiness want some sort of rental relief or those with limited cash flow are saying they are not going to pay.
    - pc86 6y ago
      Small business owners almost always have to personally guarantee commercial rents. "My business doesn't have revenue so I'm not paying" is simply not a valid response unless the owner is willing to take it the whole way to bankruptcy, which I'm sure we'll see a surge of in the coming months from the more aggressive landlords. It varies by state but my state is very forgiving to residential tenants and very unforgiving for commercial tenants (I say this as a former commercial tenant who owed past due rent at one point). The SBOs with resources will just have to continue paying rent out of pocket, or face liens against their personal assets.
nck4222 6y ago
>4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment since they were not covered prior to the passing of the senate bill last night. You (and others) are probably aware, but worth pointing out that these people still can not currently file for unemployment benefits until the house passes the bill, the senate approves any house amendments to the bill, and the president signs the bill. The house isn't voting on this until tomorrow at the earliest, so there's still a ways to go. There's probably others as well that have had their pay reduced, that are waiting to see what's going to be passed before filing for benefits. Anecdotally I know of some software engineers in this boat.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  I'm kind of confused by what it means for a gig worker to become unemployed; specifically the criteria. Is it along the lines of "I normally drive Uber. There are no riders anymore. Therefore, I can't collect income?" I mean, it'd be hard to verify such a statement is fact. A gig worker could just stop logging into Uber, then file an unemployment application. I hope there's an angle to this I'm missing.
  - jartelt 6y ago
    You likely will need to prove that your unemployment or lack of ability to work was caused by COVID-19. So doctors note, test result, order to stop work by governor, etc.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
cableshaft 6y ago
Also doesn't take into account those who have had reduced hours or salary at their jobs, like my wife's entire company (at least the employees that didn't get furloughed at her company). She got reduced to 3 days a week, for a 40% salary reduction.
rixrax 6y ago
And yet DJIA is up almost 1000 points. Is this the stimulus $$$ in work, or what is going on here?
- thematt 6y ago
  Unlikely. I suspect it's more likely month-end re-balancing.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
  Markets are complicated. Especially in the short term, you have large forces that aren't concerned only with future expected value. For instance, if you manage a fund that sold substantially on the way down, you now have a great deal of cash you need to do something with. Considering a 'local bottom' has been found, you may be very interested in trying to re-enter the market now. The risk of waiting for a lower entry begins to compete heavily with the risk of missing a buying opportunity.
- charlieflowers 6y ago
  Unfortunately, it's called "a good time to get the heck out if you haven't already."
  - GhostVII 6y ago
    Panic selling is generally a poor strategy. Feel free though I'd be happy to pick up some more cheap VGRO.
    - cloudartisans 6y ago
      You don’t think it’s a good time to “panic sell” when the market goes up 20% in just 3 days? Edit: especially while the US corona curve is not showing any signs of slowing down.
      - blackrock 6y ago
        This has got to be a dead cat bounce. Normally, when a company lays off workers, the market cheers, and the stock price goes up. Investors get to keep more of their money, and no longer have to pay out in expensive labor. But this situation is quite different, in that the economy just came to a stop, for practically everyone. At some point, this has got to trickle up, and affect the larger corporations. People won’t fly, so airlines go bankrupt. Hotels go bankrupt. Travel Agencies go bankrupt. And on and on. But of course, maybe Wall Street is expecting a bailout of the airlines, and other big businesses, so maybe that explains the optimism.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pengaru 6y ago
> 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] This should be normalized to be per-capita, comparing absolute figures is distorted by population growth. The US was only 230M people in 1982, 100M less than today. After normalizing it's more like 3.9x.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  3.9m ~ 5m are pretty similar compared to 670k...
neycoda 6y ago
This goes to show how negatively-impacting ignoring health officials is.

claudeganon 6y ago

> This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel. I think we need to couple the two events a little more closely. The 2008 Financial Crisis accelerated inequality, political instability, asset inflation, and the rise of precarious work to such a degree that the damage of this hit is being greatly compounded. To my mind, the hole that was the 2008 crisis was papered over and someone just came by and dropped a brick on it.

TheNorthman 6y ago
The former Minister of Finance in greece and current MP Yanis Varoufakis has made the same connection [0]. He argues that it's the same crisis, but that the crisis has transformed, so that the solution can't be the same as in 2008. E.g. the ability of China to offer massive renminbi-swaps is set into question because they are being hit hard by this crisis. The weren't hit during 2008. He also questions whether the US will be willing to offer the same condition-less USD-swaps. [0]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OLfHpvJKNg0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=OLfHpvJKNg0 is an interview where he explains his position.
malandrew 6y ago
> the rise of precarious work I'm not going to disagree that there was a rise in precarious work, but I think many people don't realize how valuable having this work as option is. Brazil has been economically struggling for almost a decade now, which is the same decade when this type of work appeared. For many people in Brazil this has been a godsend. It's provided an employment option where previously there would have been none. The option wasn't between precarious work and non-precarious work. It was between precarious work and no work. Precarious work at least lets workers get back on the work ladder and just being on the ladder makes it easier to grab the next rung on the ladder and pull themselves up. It's especially valuable that the precarious work also tends to be flexible. This lets people study for new skills and go to interviews, which is something much harder to do with scheduled work. The economic situation in Brazil would have been far worse if another million or more people doing this precarious work had been unemployed for the last decade instead.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  It's not that simple, because up to some point, precarious work outcompetes non-precarious work, reducing the later one. You will see all kinds of arguments and researches, but actually nobody is really sure about what that point is, and if it is a net positive or negative for workers. To make it worse, Brazil is in a kind of unique situation because official work is extremely regulated, while precarious work is well accepted and widespread (and not as new as you think), so one can not even apply the lessons from most of the world.

wil421 6y ago

The financial crisis didn’t prevent most people from spending money on entertainment or eating out. People scaled back spending or went to cheaper places. People are fearful and a lot of folks are supposed to be sheltering in place. Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference. I was in the restaurant industry during the last crisis. Lots of places stopped hiring and slowed down but business didn’t suddenly stop.

duxup 6y ago
>Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference. Yeah I've been doing a fair amount of takeout and places where you had dozens of people ... operating with two or three people now.
- alharith 6y ago
  My brother is a restaurant owner and reports that despite volume being down, profit is up due to less overhead. Others in the restaurant industry are reporting the same. When we come out on the other side of this, I think a lot of businesses are going to rethink a lot of things they held on to as infallible truths. Sorry as many mentioned, yes the key ingredient is takeout: This is a fast casual italian / pizza restaurant. I find fast casual restaurants doing just fine in my area. It's traditional sit downs that are struggling.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Is the change something that can be stabilized? Or when people have the option to eat out again, will delivery-only restaurants suffer too much from competition with eat-in restaurants? (Assuming there's some level of customer preference for eating in?) Now I'm curious about pizza places. Most pizza places offer seating. But I feel like Domino's might in fact be delivery-only.
  - duxup 6y ago
    I think fast casual already did that and going say delivery only ... might be a dead end for most small businesses. Especially as folks get out of their homes and WANT to be out and about ;)

sct202 6y ago

I definitely know more people laid off this week than last week. No one was really sure how much business they could sustain with this whole thing going on, and now that there's been a full week and a partial week employers are starting to pull the plug.

luma 6y ago

Further, unemployment benefits are managed by the states, and those states are running web services which typically see a few hundred hits a day. They are now trying to process tens of thousands of new records each day, and at least in MI the service is absolutely not up to the task. My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully file, the rest are continuing to attempt to get the state web site to work today, while more people pile in. These numbers are going to get much, much worse.

alexpetralia 6y ago
I confirmed that the state's unemployment website has slowed to a crawl (if it is working at all).
Demiurge 6y ago
As a developer I immediately though of the power of queues. Twenty people trying to submit same form does not work for everyone, but a queue processing one person at a time might allow the twenty people to submit within a short time. It is flattening the curve! If I was contracted to fix this ASAP, I would set up an nginx front-end proxy config that doesn't allow more than X sessions and suggest a time in the future when they could try again.
- pjc50 6y ago
  The matching UK system has a (huge) queue in it: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480546/Huge-queues-for-Universal-Credit-online-applications-due-to-coronavirus-surge https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480546/Huge-queues-fo...
  - Demiurge 6y ago
    Is there a human factor in processing these?
- jkaljundi 6y ago
  In related news on Queue-it: https://tech.eu/brief/queue-it-funding/ https://tech.eu/brief/queue-it-funding/

mikorym 6y ago

Not from the US, so not quite in phase with how things work. What can this tell us about actual unemployment and actual people that won't have a job now (short, medium or forever)?

nerdponx 6y ago
Hard to say. Some of them might still be employed but with zero pay, others might have been laid off, and for others their employers just folded the business.
cloverich 6y ago
Most businesses do not have capacity to pay workers and rather than hold out, some are terminating immediately so their employees can claim unemployment benefits. I know for example of Dental offices (which in Texas are mandated closed until April 21st I believe) are doing this, but have every intention of re-hiring the same staff the moment they are allowed to re-open. I'm not sure this is the typical case, but its certainly a subset.
- rdslw 6y ago
  I have to say, agressiveness of USA capitalism is shocking to watch. moral bonus: ability to 'explain' it that is just because you can claim unemployment benefit.
  - mikorym 6y ago
    Just my personal opinion here, but one should be careful to view the pandemic through the socialism vs. capitalism lens. I think it's better to focus on the particulars of events rather classifying them as in on of the two camps.

pc86 6y ago

2008 took months to unravel because of the nature of the crisis. Foreclosure is a process and in some areas can take up to 6 months or more from the time you stop paying your mortgage. Here we had state governments practically shutting down their economies overnight. Overnight, every restaurant in my state was no longer allowed to have dine in. Only maybe half in my local area stayed open for carryout, and at least 80% of those have closed in the few weeks since. The speed at which this happened is astronomical, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be multiple times worse than 2008. Just that the onset was very quick.

rmrm 6y ago
The biggest risk stated in 2008 was contagion to "main street" economy, which did eventually occur to some degree. This virus and fallout went directly to the main street economy (of the entire world at same time) and stopped it cold. I think its entirely unknown what the ultimate ramifications are of this cold stop to the world economy. But I see no reason to think its not bigger than 2008.
sciencewolf 6y ago
This is huge. It may be a months of jobless claims compacted into a week.
- tibbydudeza 6y ago
  Also the knockon effect on landlords ... many bossiness want some sort of rental relief or those with limited cash flow are saying they are not going to pay.
  - pc86 6y ago
    Small business owners almost always have to personally guarantee commercial rents. "My business doesn't have revenue so I'm not paying" is simply not a valid response unless the owner is willing to take it the whole way to bankruptcy, which I'm sure we'll see a surge of in the coming months from the more aggressive landlords. It varies by state but my state is very forgiving to residential tenants and very unforgiving for commercial tenants (I say this as a former commercial tenant who owed past due rent at one point). The SBOs with resources will just have to continue paying rent out of pocket, or face liens against their personal assets.

nck4222 6y ago

>4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment since they were not covered prior to the passing of the senate bill last night. You (and others) are probably aware, but worth pointing out that these people still can not currently file for unemployment benefits until the house passes the bill, the senate approves any house amendments to the bill, and the president signs the bill. The house isn't voting on this until tomorrow at the earliest, so there's still a ways to go. There's probably others as well that have had their pay reduced, that are waiting to see what's going to be passed before filing for benefits. Anecdotally I know of some software engineers in this boat.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
I'm kind of confused by what it means for a gig worker to become unemployed; specifically the criteria. Is it along the lines of "I normally drive Uber. There are no riders anymore. Therefore, I can't collect income?" I mean, it'd be hard to verify such a statement is fact. A gig worker could just stop logging into Uber, then file an unemployment application. I hope there's an angle to this I'm missing.
- jartelt 6y ago
  You likely will need to prove that your unemployment or lack of ability to work was caused by COVID-19. So doctors note, test result, order to stop work by governor, etc.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

cableshaft 6y ago

Also doesn't take into account those who have had reduced hours or salary at their jobs, like my wife's entire company (at least the employees that didn't get furloughed at her company). She got reduced to 3 days a week, for a 40% salary reduction.

rixrax 6y ago

And yet DJIA is up almost 1000 points. Is this the stimulus $$$ in work, or what is going on here?

thematt 6y ago
Unlikely. I suspect it's more likely month-end re-balancing.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
Markets are complicated. Especially in the short term, you have large forces that aren't concerned only with future expected value. For instance, if you manage a fund that sold substantially on the way down, you now have a great deal of cash you need to do something with. Considering a 'local bottom' has been found, you may be very interested in trying to re-enter the market now. The risk of waiting for a lower entry begins to compete heavily with the risk of missing a buying opportunity.
charlieflowers 6y ago
Unfortunately, it's called "a good time to get the heck out if you haven't already."
- GhostVII 6y ago
  Panic selling is generally a poor strategy. Feel free though I'd be happy to pick up some more cheap VGRO.
  - cloudartisans 6y ago
    You don’t think it’s a good time to “panic sell” when the market goes up 20% in just 3 days? Edit: especially while the US corona curve is not showing any signs of slowing down.
    - blackrock 6y ago
      This has got to be a dead cat bounce. Normally, when a company lays off workers, the market cheers, and the stock price goes up. Investors get to keep more of their money, and no longer have to pay out in expensive labor. But this situation is quite different, in that the economy just came to a stop, for practically everyone. At some point, this has got to trickle up, and affect the larger corporations. People won’t fly, so airlines go bankrupt. Hotels go bankrupt. Travel Agencies go bankrupt. And on and on. But of course, maybe Wall Street is expecting a bailout of the airlines, and other big businesses, so maybe that explains the optimism.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pengaru 6y ago

> 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] This should be normalized to be per-capita, comparing absolute figures is distorted by population growth. The US was only 230M people in 1982, 100M less than today. After normalizing it's more like 3.9x.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
3.9m ~ 5m are pretty similar compared to 670k...

neycoda 6y ago

This goes to show how negatively-impacting ignoring health officials is.