4-Week Moving Average in Initial Claims
The best way to spotlight trends in initial claims is to look at the 4-week moving average.
I added that chart for this week’s report.
The 4-week moving average trend lower bottomed two weeks ago at 740,000 and is now 812,500.
It rose for the second consecutive week. That hasn’t happened since April 18.
Initial State Unemployment Claims in 2020 2020-11-17
Initial unemployment claims are seasonally adjusted. Initial claims were in the 200,000 to 215,000 range pre-pandemic. They are now 855,000.
Continued State Unemployment Claims
Continued state unemployment claims are also seasonally adjusted. They lag initial claims by a week.
Continued claims ticked lower, but this is a statistical mirage.
People fall off the rolls as benefits expire. Millions have now expired benefits.
When people exhaust their state benefits they are eligible for emergency federal benefits.
Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Claims (PEUC)
PEUC claims lag continued claims by a week, They are not seasonally adjusted.
PEUC benefits kick in after people have exhausted regular state benefits.
Despite the lags and the seasonal adjustment mix, you can get a better feel for the true state of affairs by adding PEU claims to continued claims.
As with continued state claims, millions of workers have exhausted their PEUC benefits as well.
Thus, even the addition of PEUC claims to continued claims understates the problem by millions.
PUA Claims
PUA claims cover part-time workers and self-employed. They are not seasonally adjusted.
This program is rife with fraud, double-counting, and reporting errors.
That said, some percentage of PUA claims are not fraudulent. And of that subset, some of those on PUA claims are not working at all.
All Continued Claims in 2020
All continued claims is the total of everything above except initial claims.
Since it contains PUA claims this number is also rife with fraud, double-counting, and reporting errors.
All continued claims are over 20 million and have been every week since April 25 except for the week ending November 28.
Expiring Benefits
The PEUC and PUA programs expire completely on December 26.
Expect Congress to have a package by then, but the details are subject to negotiation.
Democrats and Republicans have been bickering over this since September.
For discussion, please see Desire to Reach a Deal and Doing It are Two Different Things.
More Than 500,000 Restaurants are in Freefall
Note that More Than 500,000 Restaurants are in Freefall
And in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom passed a three-week stay-at-home order (including shutting down outdoor dining) for parts of the state.
We have not yet seen the impact of that measure nor similar measures in other states.
Expect the Most Evictions in History
The ban on evictions expires in January and it has not been part of the Congressional talks on another Covid package.
I Expect the Most Evictions in History as Ban Expires.
Mish
A terrifying coalition of big business and big tech are so confident and brazen they are promising the public “you will own nothing, and you will be happy” in an advertising campaign for a global reset, according to Sky News host Rowan Dean. https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6215927832001
Time to dust off the AR’s.
Off Topic but interesting.
It’s started.
Just got an email from the people that run my trading platform for my Sipp.
“The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced that from 6 January 2021, only professional investors will be able to purchase cryptoassets.
This means that from 16:00 on 5 January 2021, you will no longer be able to purchase cryptoassets with EQi.
Cryptoassets can be subject to extreme volatility and high risk, the FCA is therefore introducing a UK-wide ban on their purchase by private investors.
This ban will apply to all EQi customers although if you already hold cryptoassets, you will not be required to sell them and can continue to hold them as part of your portfolio. Some cryptoassets cannot be held within an ISA; if this affects you, we will contact you directly.”
I hadn’t seen it but it looks as if it was published in October, so not new news.
Back on Dec 6th, I said something was off on the vaccine numers….
In Wapo, today….Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said anticipated shipments to the state in the next two weeks had been cut roughly in half. The uncertainty was even more pronounced in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said new shipments from Pfizer were “on hold,” as officials in his administration reported their expected allocation disappearing entirely in Tiberius, the online tracking system the federal government uses to coordinate vaccine distribution with the states. Fred Piccolo Jr., a spokesman for DeSantis, said the numbers had come back online by Thursday but had been reduced significantly.
“It’s 40 percent less than we were originally thinking,” Washington state Health Secretary John Wiesman said. “We thought we were getting 74,100 and now we are planning for 44,850 doses.”
Maine said it is receiving about 40 percent fewer doses than expected — 8,775 rather than 13,650. The state will not be able to fully launch its program next week to vaccinate residents and staff of all long-term-care facilities, said Robert Long, a spokesman for the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Michael Pratt, an HHS spokesperson, denied any changes to “numbers locked in with states” and said the government was still on track to allocate enough vaccine for about 20 million people to receive their first doses by year’s end.
“Each week, [Operation Warp Speed] will let states know how many doses are available to order against for the coming week,” he said.
The senior administration official said moving up the notice to Tuesday was the reason for the one-week shortfall, as “we are sending doses that have been produced, verified and released.”
Wiesman, of Washington state, said he could appreciate Operation Warp Speed’s decision to provide numbers of verified doses only, as opposed to an estimate of what might be available by week’s end. But he said states can’t plan without a longer-term sense of what they will receive, which has been impossible because of changing estimates from the pharmaceutical companies and from Operation Warp Speed.
They meant Operation Warped Speed. Trump admin has been a miserable failure at everything else. This wont be any different. Trump is the classic overpromise and underdeliver kinda guy. No one should believe anything as long as he is in charge.
Hopefully Moderna gets to ship their 20 million doses today sometime. Apparently the FDA deciders are deciding as we type right now.
Ok, putting on my Mish-hat now:
Seems to me if folks living in “corrupt” “Democratic” states – weather said folks be “Republican” or “Democratic”, if their retirement is non funded in part due to totally NON CORRUPT Fed suppression of interest rates for decades, and if their stolen retirement should not be honored even if they are “Republicans” living in “corrupt” “Democratic” states, it therefor follows that:
ACCORDING TO THE GOD OF MISH:
Republicans and Democratic working folk living in “not corrupt” Republican states (but they might be corrupt in world not in the THE WORLD ACCORDING TO THE GOD OF MISH) should:
NOT BE ALLOWED ANY FEDERAL UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE.
Ever.
It’s only fair. If we shouldn’t bailout out “corrupt” “Democratic” states retirement of working folk, then ACCORDING TO THE GOD OF MISH we shouldn’t bailout out “not” “corrupt” “Republican” state working folks.
In 45 tweets this week (so far) the president has not said a single word about the record deaths from COVID. Or economic stimulus. Or the Russian hack. Not. One. Word. Instead, it is an endless litany of complaints, self-aggrandizement, and conspiracy theorizing.
From Bulwark: We have never seen a dereliction of duty at this scale from an American president. With citizens dying by the thousands every single day and the federal government being raided by the intelligence services belonging to his good friend, he pouts and rages and tweets and tries to overturn a free and fair election in order to break our democratic republic.
There is no precedent for this. No historical analog to help us understand the scale of destruction and the level of irresponsibility, stupidity, and derangement.
At least not in American history.
Russian hack? Cloud systems using Solarwinds123 as a long term password. Known on back channels for a long time. Russian hacks, Iranian hacks, Korean hacks, Chinese hacks. Never German or English hacks.
Not even close. The hackers were able to inject malware into SolarWinds Orion product. Very sophisticated. Because it was so cleverly design and exploited there is no telling the damage.
“While investigating the breach, FireEye tracked down the intrusion to a malware-laced version of SolarWinds Orion, a network monitoring tool used inside large enterprise networks.
Notified by FireEye, SolarWinds admitted on Sunday to getting hacked, disclosing that several Orion app updates released between March and June contained a backdoor trojan.
A day later, SolarWinds admitted in SEC documents that around 18,000 customers had installed the trojanized updates, triggering a massive search inside enterprise networks, with IT personnel looking to see if they had installed the malware-laced Orion app version and if second-stage malware payloads were used to escalate attacks.
This proved a cumbersome and difficult task, as the malware, named SUNBURST, or Solorigate, contained a decoupled design between the first and second-stage payloads that made it tricky to determine on what and how many systems the hackers escalated their access.”
“Record deaths”? What are you comparing against?
So,,,what is the scarier thing…that we could elect a corrupt and incompetent second rate real estate developer to the highest office in the land…..or is it the fact that half the country thinks he’s some kind of hero?
And the Senate Majority leader stands up in public and congratulates him on “shaking things up”, as he has to be dragged kicking and screaming from the White House.
For me, the first part is not that surprising….the second part is more of a long term symptom of a sick society.
That is what happens when you force businesses to close to battle Covid. I hope business owners remember who gave the orders when the next elections come around.
This looks cozy!
Yeah, who cares about 25,000 deaths a weeks.
Eff em, you say!
Yay Jojo.
Almost 3 million people die in the USA every single year of various illnesses and diseases. That’s EVERY SINGLE YEAR. That works out to about 8,000 deaths EVERY DAY. No one ever seemed to have much of a problem with these deaths in the past.
s
And yet, a minor virus that generates a likely one year total death count of maybe 350k (assuming you believe the numbers in the first place) and then fades into obscurity, get everyone so worked up and fearful that adding an additional $7 TRILLION to the USA debt while destroying the lives (financially and mentally) of millions if not hundreds of millions in the USA alone is justifiable by any measure? I think not.
Even 3 million Covid deaths would not justify the carnage that has been inflicted on life, finances, education, the future in the USA by politicians and health officers overreacting to the Covid threat.
CA COVID update: ICU capacity drops to 0% in Southern California as state reports 379 new deaths, shattering record…In Los Angeles County alone, about two people are dying every hour on average from the coronavirus.
Just a few headlines from the last couple of days….
Sherman Oaks Hospital on Brink of Being Overwhelmed With COVID Patients
COVID-19 is pushing rural Nevada hospitals to the brink
New Mexico hospitals on brink of rationing care
‘On the brink’: Covid pressure mounts at hospitals in Northern Ireland
COVID-19 surge puts Harrisburg region hospitals on brink of staffing crisis
Hospital workers pushed to the brink in COVID pandemic
Philly’s overworked 911 dispatchers are on the ‘brink of a collapse.’
Record numbers of covid-19 patients push hospitals and staffs to the limit
Record COVID-19 case counts in Shelby County threaten to overwhelm hospitals
New York City suspends elective surgeries amid persistent COVID-19 spread
Mississippi hospitals overwhelmed by surge in COVID-19 cases
San Antonio-Local hospitals are overwhelmed. Officials say COVID vaccine isn’t an easy fix
OSINGS AND DELAYS
There is currently 1 active closing. Click for more details.
Indiana hospitals warn COVID-19 surge could overwhelm them
As virus rages, Texas intensive care units at the brink
And why should anyone care? It’s not my/our problem that hospitals chose to save money, understaff and not have enough headroom for when it is needed. I don’t care about the sob stories.
Personally, I look forward to the daily Covid death increases on the TV news. Weeding out the weak is the best course for all of society going forward.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Bring Out Your Dead
Anyone who thinks they need to eat out is a moron.
You conveniently leave out providing relief to owners. Europe got it right–they closed up but then subsidized owners for their loss. Trump and his minions didn’t want that.
Europe got it wrong. Small businesses were shut down and were not compensated. Large businesses were given handouts. I live in France. There is blood everywhere. I wonder who feeds you this malarkey.
Next election there won’t be small business owners