The Check’s in The Mail: I thought it was pretty sad over the past few weeks when news started to trickle out that big companies were taking loans intended, in spirit and practice, for small businesses. But, then, this week came along. The Economic Policy Institute came out with the following conclusion based on a March/April national survey: Only about half of the “potential” unemployment insurance applicants “are actually receiving benefits,” concluded EPI, a left of center think tank. There are a lot of reasons for this: like overwhelmed state unemployment systems. In addition, some states like Florida (shocker) have made it more difficult to draw benefits over the years, according to The New York Times. In other unemployment news, some state officials are already worried that the jobless won’t return to work fast enough—and may strike back. The Washington Post reports that states like Oklahoma and Iowa are threatening to strip benefits from workers who are afraid to return to potentially unsafe jobs. “If there is a claimant out there that says ‘you know what, I can make more money sitting at home,’ ” one Oklahoma government big was quoted in the Post. “then, if the employer will contact us, that’s a refusal of civil work and we’ll cut off their benefits.” Nice. Thank goodness farm state officials are fighting for our right to eat pork chops.
Newsweek
May 5, 2020
1. You may regret staying home later
If you do choose to sit tight at home until July, you won’t be the only one hitting the job market this summer. The Economic Policy Institute predicts a nationwide unemployment rate of 15.6% in July of this year. To put that in perspective, the highest unemployment rate experienced during the Great Recession was 10% in October 2009.
The Motley Fool
May 5, 2020
A recent analysis by Elise Gould and Ben Zipperer of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that, from March 15 to April 18, between 8.9 million and 13.9 million more people would have filed for unemployment benefits had the application process been easier.
The Washington Post
May 5, 2020
A survey conducted in mid-April by the Economic Policy Institute found that for every 10 people who successfully filed a claim for unemployment insurance, three to four tried to file but were unable to get through the system. In addition, two more didn’t try to apply for UI at all because it was too difficult.
“These findings imply the official count of unemployment insurance claims likely drastically understates the extent of employment reductions and the need for economic relief during the coronavirus crisis,” wrote Ben Zipperer and Elise Gould of the EPI.
Accounting for the workers who were unable to apply for unemployment, or tried but didn’t get through, the EPI survey found that only about half of potential UI applicants are actually receiving benefits.
Applying those findings to the five weeks of unemployment claims from March 15 to April 18, the EPI estimates an additional 8.9 million to 13.9 million could have filed for claims if the process had been easier.
Business Insider
May 5, 2020
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