One of America’s most powerful capitalists, Reginald Jones, who became G.E.’s chairman and C.E.O. in 1972, lived in a modest brick Colonial in Greenwich. His daughter, Grace Vineyard, told me, “He asked my mom, ‘Do you want anything more?’ And she said, ‘Why would we want anything more?’ ” Leo Hindery worked for Jones as a junior executive. “I earned fifteen thousand six hundred dollars when I got out of Stanford, and Reg’s salary was two hundred thousand dollars,” Hindery said. “G.E. was the preëminent company in America, and the C.E.O. was making twelve or thirteen times what I did.” According to the Economic Policy Institute, that ratio wasn’t unusual: in 1965, the C.E.O. of an average large public company earned about twenty times as much as a front-line worker. Today, that figure is two hundred and seventy-eight times.
The New Yorker
May 5, 2020
According to a recent blog post from the Economic Policy Institute, based on already existing predicted budget shortfalls and recent data projections, state and local governments will need another stimulus package of $500 billion.
Business Insider
May 5, 2020
As of late April 2020, that 25% unemployment rate was already a fact. The official government data indicated 26.5m workers had filed for unemployment benefits. That’s about 16.5% of the 165 million US civilian labor force. Bank forecasts are 40 million jobless on benefits by the end of May. But respected research sources, like the Economic Policy Institute, recently estimated that as many as 13.9m more are actually out of work but have not yet been able to successfully file for unemployment benefits. So the 40 million jobless may already be here. And that’s roughly equivalent to a 25% unemployment rate. In other words, in just a couple months the US economy has collapsed to such an extent that the jobless ranks are at a level that took four years to attain during the great depression of the 1930s!
Counter Punch
May 5, 2020
The big squeeze: City and state workers are getting axed from payrolls as governments tighten spending, at the cost of education, sanitation, and public health and safety, Tony Romm writes for The Washington Post. The National League of Cities estimates that between 300,000 and one million public sector workers could soon be out of a job or furloughed without pay, affecting all aspects of municipal life. The Post’s Andrew Van Dam has analyzed unemployment claims from states that break them down by industry to show how the crisis has affected different industries in waves: first, service industries that rely on face-to-face contact, then manufacturing and construction work that relies on group labor, and then trade and trucking and all of the administrative work that goes into making other parts of the economy run properly. The two most recent waves of unemployment have impacted white collar and public sector workers. The public sector used to keep the economy going when times were tough, Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, tells Van Dam, but no longer. “Over the last couple of recessions, the public sector hasn’t played that traditional role,” Zipperer said. “As a result, we’ve seen steeper recessions and slower recoveries.”
Fair Warning
May 5, 2020
This week, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) announced that although some 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since the crisis began — a number that rose to 30 million since its study was published — that number drastically understates the economic devastation in the US.
In a survey published on Tuesday, the think tank found that up to 13.9 million other Americans were eligible for the benefits. A portion of those people applied but never had their documents processed. Others “did not try to apply because it was too difficult to do so.”
Business Insider
May 5, 2020
1.
Another 3.8 million U.S. workers filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The new figures bring the total over six weeks to more than 30 million as the coronavirus crisis continues to shut down businesses. The once unthinkable total could even be an undercount, economists say, as many states have been overwhelmed by the rush of applications for unemployment benefits, which Congress have extended to include self-employed taxpayers. A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that about 50 percent more people than were counted might have been eligible but found the process too daunting. “The problem is even bigger than the data suggest,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist with the left-leaning research institute. [The New York Times]
Yahoo
May 5, 2020
The Covid-19 pandemic has yanked the bottom out of the economy, and the working class is plunging into the debt hole first. In 2019, most Americans lacked the savings to cover an emergency. Now, over 26.5 million people have filed for unemployment in the United States since mid-March, and countless more have been unable to file for benefits as overwhelmed state unemployment agencies cannot keep up with demand. (A recent survey from the Economic Policy Institute estimates between 8.9 million and 13.9 million people who should qualify have not gained access to needed benefits.) Meanwhile, countless others have been furloughed, have had their hourly work reduced, or have lost income as they instead take care of sick family or homebound children. Some economists are predicting unemployment rates rivaling or even exceeding Great Depression figures. The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package offsetting the enormous, unexpected financial catastrophe includes considerable support for homeowners, allowing people with government-backed mortgages to skip payments for up to a year, instead adding them to the mortgage balance. This necessary economic balm has no counterpart for renters, though. Payments are still due. The emergency is here.
WIRED
May 5, 2020