Staff talks are underway but ABC News reports discussions on Thursday were strictly about passing the omnibus spending bill – which would fund the government through next year – and were unrelated to any additional coronavirus relief.
Meanwhile lockdowns increase and unemployment claims are ticking up.
Initial Claims Rose Second Week
Initial claims rose for the second consecutive week. That is the first occurrence since mid-July
Continued Claims
Continued claims fell but they lag initial claims by a week.
Don’t count on seasonal hiring to save the day because the the numbers are seasonally adjusted.
Primary PUA Claims
PEUC Claims
Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation
PEUC claims rose again, despite some people exhausting all their benefits.
How the Claims Tie Together
- Most states offer at least 26 weeks of unemployment insurance plus 13 or more weeks of extended benefits. Some states offer more. States offering 30 or fewer weeks are noted.
- A Federal pandemic PEUC (Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation) program kicks in after regular state programs expire. PEUC provides 13 weeks of compensation at the paid state level but the money comes from the federal government. Every state participates in PEUC. It kicks in before extended benefits.
- Persons not eligible for state claims can file for the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program. PUA covers gig workers and self-employed workers who are not covered by state programs. It also covers part-time workers. PUA is rife with fraud and terrible reporting.
- After PEUC expires, most but not all states have Extended Benefit programs also paid by the federal government but not every state is in the program.
Benefits Rapidly Expiring
My chart above is modified from CBPP Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Policy Basics: How Many Weeks of Unemployment Compensation Are Available?
Where I show two numbers, the first number is regular state unemployment insurance and the second number (if present) represents extended benefits.
Unemployment Math
- Unemployment spiked on March 21.
- We are in week 36 of the pandemic.
- The federal government provides 13 weeks of unemployment insurance to all states.
- 36 – 13 = 23.
If you lost your job early in any state that provides 22 or less weeks of state + extended benefits, then you have exhausted all of your state benefits and all of your PEUC benefits.
Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina ,Missouri and Idaho are all in that group.
12 Million Face Unemployment Benefit Cliff On December 26
PUAC and PEUC expires on December 26.
About 3.5 million people already exhausted PEUC.
Unless there is a deal, about 12 million people will lose all their unemployment benefits in December.
Bankruptcies, evictions, and foreclosures will soar.
I expect a deal, but it will not be the all encompassing deal that Democrats want.
Mish
When the economy worked well Congress seemed to be fine. In fact, we all know the less they did, the better off we all were. Now that Congress must give very serious thought to what they do in order to save the nation, we can see they haven’t a clue. Invest in ammo.
Black Friday sales were massive. So much for Pelosi’s theory that Trillions more should have been pumped into the economy over the last few months.
Black Friday online shopping comes in $9B, $3.6B on smartphones
Ingrid Lunden@ingridlunden / 4:12 AM PST•November 28, 2020
I watched this yesterday. Our future is kind of doomed unless we get a form of capitalism where workers benefit just as much as investors and shareholders.
God only knows how we get put of this mess. The societal stress will leave scars for years. It demands the type of mobilisation a world war would else the under class will only grow and instability result.
Imagine what happens if its proven this came from a lab?
If that happens, and the stress as severe as it could be, no need to worry about tariffs. Its game over for relations with the CCP.
Nothing will happen, except for homelessness and despair.
They will simply keep going on this trajectory. It’s already becoming obvious that the number of extra fatalities over the course of 2020 will astonish everybody with how low they are, especially if you discount dislocations and offsets in other ordinary causes of death such as heart failure, pneumonia, flu, etc.
I hear from the grapevine that some stalwarts of one political party say that there is a patent on this covid virus, proving it came from a lab. OTOH, some commenters on ZH and elsewhere claim no virus has been identified and characterized yet. Another story I heard, I think on MSM, is that China early -on provided the US Gov’t with the genome specifications. Can someone here provide factual clarity, with sources? Thanks in advance.
If they’re going to shut it down and cause millions of job losses then they’re going to have to initiate UBI. I’m sorry but with the amount of people getting laid off it’s either that or instant hellhole. The people that already say we’re 3rd world are going to see the true definition if something isn’t done. And that something isn’t lockdowns and masks till the end of time as recently (from what I heard) suggested from even some of the top brass in our military. There is way more to this than meets the eye.
I have lived in Colorado since 1979 and all you have to do is notice the out of state license plates to know who is hurting, I remember when they were from Michigan, then Texas, and today we are flooded with California plates.
I can offer two facts:
My son in law in DC was laid off and is getting $660 per week in unemployment. That is >$2400per month.
He is not even going to look for a new job until March.
My job is in packaging – we are going very strong. We have about 200 job openings in our factories in ATL, LA, INDY and Houston. About $20 per hour and full med coverge. We are trying to get temps but that is also difficult.
Some folks choose to hunker down and avoid Covid. All the rich folks I know here in LA have bailed to their ranches in Colorado, Montana, Idaho, the yacht in the Mediterranian etc…while expecting their businesses to run. If you wish to play Covid roulette its your choice but don’t bag on those that don’t
Every day I see the TV featuring people waiting hours in lines for food handouts, charities telling us that homelessness is soaring, I see stories about people losing their living arrangements, malls are empty, much of retail is filing for bankruptcy and of course, politicians, health officers and MSM keep telling us the situation is “DIRE”, how the virus is “RAGING”, stay home, stay away from everyone else or you’ll get the cooties, hospitals are overcrowded, there aren’t enough ICU beds, etc., etc.
Yet, after 8 months of this constant scare mongering and among my hundreds of connections including family, friends and loose acquaintances, I still don’t know even one person who has actually had Covid, let along been hospitalized or died. NOT ONE! This doesn’t seem mathematically probable and has to make me wonder how real the MSM numbers actually are.
OTOH, the stock market is going gang busters, companies are talking about new IPO’s, housing sales are soaring as are prices, airports are crowded with people flying to family or vacation for Thanksgiving, online shopping sales are exceeding expectations, B&M stores are crowded, local traffic in my area is up significantly and I am seeing many new cars where I live (lot of Tesla’s!) .
I doubt the Republicans are seeing a need for further stimulus. Perhaps if the markets were allowed to crash?
I lost two uncles in the first wave. One in-law had it and recovered.
A fellow in Liverpool with the virus had a fatal fall from a ladder …. about 20 feet I think; the reason given for his death was … wait for it … Covid19. I’ve not made any comment on this blog about Covid but I will make one now. No one with an enquiring mind in the UK has any confidence in the numbers. And more and more people are inclined to think that Boris, his health secretary, the scientists et al just spout utter bollox which is simply parroted by the BBC and other media to keep us locked down for some as yet unexplained reason. Everyone is just thoroughly THOROUGHLY pissed off.
Do you have some evidence to back that up? New story? Police report? Anything?
Really, reading the article, I can see the justification for calling the death one from Covid. That is probably correct. Nevertheless, a healthy argument could be made that the true cause was stupidity. Why someone who has ARDS, and who is having trouble breathing, would be at the top of a ladder, rather than in the hospital is beyond me. The reason I side with Covid, rather tha stupidity, is that the articles I have read indicate that people suffering from hypoxia from Covid are “happy hypoxics”, and have no idea they have low oxygen levels until they collapse.
“and have no idea they have low oxygen levels until they collapse.”
My daughter’s still checking with the Oximeter I bought her after your suggestion, thanks. It’s 3 weeks ago tomorrow she first came out with symptoms and still has an awful hacking cough that makes her sick a couple of times a day, although it is slowly improving. We think it’ll be a few more weeks before it goes completely. She’s probably going to get a chest X-ray in due course to assess any longer term damage. She’s still a bit breathless going for short walks etc. She’s young and fit (or was) so it’s pot luck if you get it badly or not.
That’s good to hear but whether and how bad you might get sick from Covid isn’t “pot luck”. There is something that makes certain people more susceptible than others. It will take time to discover what those factors are.
A lot of guesses have been made to-date from lack of vitamins such as D to different blood types (I have A+ blood (because I am an A+ guy!), which is supposed to be the worst type for contacting the virus but have had no problems so far), certain genetics, various comorbidities, etc., etc.
Thank you.
I suppose by “pot luck” I meant it’s not easy to determine whether you’ll get it badly or not if you contract it. In the case of my daughter and partner, both 36 and very fit & healthy. He had no symptoms at all and she had it badly. I agree something made her more susceptible, but it’s not easy determining what.
I’m sorry she is having such a struggle, but glad she is finding the oximeter useful. I’ve never had one before, but bought one for this. I had an incident last summer where I thought i might have Covid due to something feeling “odd” about my lungs, but I tested negative. The oximeter showed me in the 93-96 range for a week or two, but now it’s back to 98-100 all the time. Maybe it was covid, or maybe it was something else, but since i never dipped to 92 or less, I never went to the doctor other than for the Covid test.
The XRay, or other diagnostic tests are things she definitely should go in for, considering the extent of her problems. The Oximeter is not a substitute for those more accurate tests; it’s just something that is a handy indicator, one that might be useful in telling someone they should be getting medical attention when they don’t realize the severity of the situation. It also can be a positive indicator when you are getting better that things are on the right track.
I hope she has a complete recovery. Good luck.
Apologies, Zardoz, it appears the event wasn’t in the UK – the original source I got it from was slightly misleading. But the story stands as is and is I think somewhat indicative of the blatant massaging of data and information that seems to be going on. As I have said many are now questioning the Government’s actions and motives. The most forgiving explanation is that the Government has got itself into a modus operandi that it simply can’t get out of without huge loss of face, so keeps doubling down on the wrong actions. The UK public, small businesses etc are the ones truly suffering.
Croatia, Liverpool, really the same thing.
I have fond memories of the ‘pool. Worked there for a few years and the city always had a buzz about it. It’s probably a lot worse off than Croatia today though. I really feel for the people who are suffering through draconian Government policy in light of the pandemic.
Democrats should want personal bankruptcy over extended unemployment funds since the claim could be made the capitalist Republicans are taking the losses instead of taxpayers in general.
????? Democrats are capitalists too. The rich aren’t declaring bankruptcy, it’s the poor going broke. Seems free market/free enterprise types (Republicans????) should want capitalists to take the loss since they get the rewards because they take the risks.
When people go broke, there are often assets topickup on the cheap.
Unemployment in my state is back to the same level it was during Obama’s last 2 years. It is now at 4.9%. The last 2 years of Obama’s administration it ranged between (4 to 5). It then dipped lower during Trump’s last 2 years down to 3.1%.
Traffic seems back to normal. Restaurants are almost full again. Some I visited two weeks ago had every table taken. I personally do not know one person who is unemployed. My daughter actually had 1 job prior to the pandemic. Was laid off. When lockdowns ended, she started apply for jobs. She got her old job back and was offered another job. So she took the new but still works part time at her old job. Thus she was able to secure 2 jobs over the past 6 months. Same thing happened to a friend of hers. They both are working 2 jobs.
I think she was able to get 2 jobs because while the extra unemployment benefits were being paid out some people did not want to go back to work as they would be making less money. If you were aggressive and looking for a job then you could easily find one.
What state is this?
Midwest state. Not dependent on tourist dollars. The following midwest states are all about the same. They peaked at arouond 11% unemployment but it has been dropping fast.
Iowa = 4.7%
Nebraska = 4.9
Kansas = 4.9
Missouri= 4.9
Actually I just read Nebraska has fallen to 4%. Idaho is at 4.2%
I am in Nebraska. I see no signs of mass unemployment. That said, that doesn’t mean business is normal. Many small businesses are struggling. Mine is off 50% now after being off “only” 20% in the summer. My employees all have jobs, but are getting only about half their usual hours. Everyone is tightening their belts, but we’ll get by.
Now I will say I am starting to see a lot of people I know get covid over the past 3 to 4 weeks. Nobody hospitalized yet. Crossing fingers.
This weekend should give a good indication of the extent of the problem. Thus far the economy seems to be functioning more or less OK. Obviously, there was no need for another $3 Trillion of spending last summer. Had that gone through, what would we have now? Dow 1 million? Huge inflation? Perhaps.
In the meantime, it seems reasonable to believe that as unemployment benefits run out, this will eventually take a broad toll on the economy. I expect that the government will step in and pass some form of extensions for unemployment benefits. Hopefully they won’t get crazy and do much more than that, but I can’t predict. Now, if it turns out that this next week is very, very slow for retail, and if even online holiday purchases take a hit, then I expect the government will most likely step in with more dramatic action.
In the meantime, what can and should we all be doing? Government is neither the only answer, nor even the best answer. Charities traditionally play a key role in times like these. Consider donating extra gifts to them as the end of the year approaches. If you are religious, you can donate to things like Churches, City Missions, or the Salvation Army. If not, there are also secular causes like the Food Bank, etc. Don’t expect the government to be the only answer.
meanwhile….
(Dow Jones) — WASHINGTON — President Trump’s decision to defer payroll taxes until the end of the year is leaving challenges for lawmakers to manage after he leaves office in January, and they haven’t figured out what — if anything — to do.
How many companies actually elected to defer payroll taxes? I didn’t, and I don’t know anyone who did. I had no employees who wanted it, and it just created an accounting burden, as well as a liability risk for the business. If you deferred the payroll tax, and an employee quit on January 1, the business still owes the tax, but has no one to collect it from. If they are on the ball, and if it is permitted, they can latch on to the employee’s last check to pay the tax, but otherwise, too bad for the business.
I doubt any large companies did. but small businesses? maybe
Might be worth the gamble that the government wouldn’t figure out how to collect.
Agree with Mich – 11th hour+ 59 minute fix will be passed – probably not good, but not horrible and all the other fixes – health care for the uninsured, housing will be kicked down the road as Congress seems to have loss interest in their part of the democracy.
With plenty of pork for their donors.
Always! A big bill, that hands out money to all, is the perfect cover for handing out pork, and politicians (of both parties), never want to miss an opportunity to reward those that really matter, the ones that donated to their campaigns.
One of the most frustrating things about covid is how often it forces you to return to first principles.
This is a virus. It spreads by close contact between people, especially inside. People are afraid of getting this virus, so many of them will stay at home regardless of whether there are government restrictions in place.
This isn’t complicated. It is very basic indeed. And yet it still seems beyond the comprehension of many of the people who regularly debate the issue. link to mailchi.mp
It would be helpful if the restrictions the UK introduced were not so contradictory. Eg only the same 3 households can meet indoors over the 4 day Christmas period. Yet whole families could travel on public transport to a football match and potentially meet up to 2000 people. Similarly a group of of people can meet for a business lunch or Christmas Party just before Christmas and then give the virus to their families over Christmas. Even people who agree that restrictions are necessary find this situation muddled and ridiculous.
Can’t edit “ 5 day Christmas period”
But what if we are tired of the daily scare mongering and calling wolf? Lockdowns, masks and social distancing were supposed to fix the problem back in the spring in a few weeks. But that didn’t happen, meaning that approach is not valid. So why keep repeating something that didn’t work?
You can whine about the reason being stupid, freedom loving Americans didn’t strictly follow the scare mongering rules but then you’d have to apply that excuse to the world in general because most countries are facing Covid resurgences.
Nothing is going to change, no matter what rules and penalties TPTB try to put into place. At this point, many of us don’t care and are not going to comply with whatever rules are issued. And there is very little that anyone can do about it.
But feel free to keep whining if it makes you feel better.
good thing is we’re gonna start(hopium) that MAL-INVESTMENT will START getting corrected
Problem is corrupt politicians are picking winners and losers(ie big corporates)
Walt Disney Co. is planning to layoff 32,000 employees, primarily at its theme parks, as the coronavirus continues to hit the entertainment company’s businesses hard.
Disney announced 28,000 job cuts in September and it expects to terminate its employees’ contracts in the first half of fiscal 2021.
The company warned that it could take additional measures such as not declaring future dividends and either reducing or not making certain payments, such as contributions to its pension and postretirement medical plans.
Ah, the filthy poors. Did Jesus not teach that they exist only as profit centers for God’s chosen? To be poor is to be chastised by God for not being holy enough!
Give Jesus 5 breads and 2 fishes and the whole issue would get solved… Problem is he’s not around at the moment.
How many more weeks can we endure the better part of 1 million people losing their jobs? How long before those in essential positions will no longer be needed because they are interrelated? How many essential businesses depend on non-essential businesses? Are these lockdown restrictions really worth it? It appears many here think they are but I think there are some really nefarious reasons that go way beyond covid19. Yeah right, crash the entire economy then leave millions hanging out to dry with no jobs and no unemployment? I don’t buy any of this for an instant! I know the virus is real but this is insane. For those of us who are better off exactly how much longer before all these millions losing everything start creating problems for the rest of us? You tell me, i’m all ears.
Haven’t you thought it through yet?
Do the small stuff to slow the spread so the big hammer of lockdowns aren’t needed.
That’s it–that’s the simple story.
Top down leadership was required–but was not provided. In fact, prevention measures were sabotaged and hindered by the top leadership.
12th highest rate of cases out of 217 countries. 9th highest in death rate.
So shutdowns are here again.
This time there are no low virus areas to send health-care workers from other states to help out.
Mitch doesn’t care. Trump doesn’t care.
This country is at the mercy of vengeful idiots for the next couple of months.
Well when the hospitals are about to get overloaded what else can they do. Maybe if everyone just wore a mask/ tried to stay 6 ft away and washed some hands things would not be so bad. Chalk it up to human nature.
On a different note. What would the cost to the economy if the government did nothing. Know one talks about that. Would anyone go to the movies or out to eat if we had a million dead flooded hospitals workers afraid to go to work. It would be panic in the streets. The same crowd would be complaining that the government did not do anything to prevent the chaos. Would we be any better off than we are now.
I’m not convinced.
You are suggesting what ‘might’ happen. What for sure has happened is 1 million losing there jobs for weeks for months with no end in sight. These people “are” going to lose a lot including their lives possibly.
Well, there’s the 250,000 that died. That happened.
I didn’t know any of them.
I only knew a couple. They’re still dead.
Well its not an apples to apples comparison but you could look back in history. Check out the plague and how it reshaped shaped Europe’s economy. Seems i remember some lock downs. Ships quarantined till clear to unload. Didnt really stop it but hey there still digging mass up mass graves. Maybe look to see cholera in london. Ebola in africa.
You were alive in the time of the Plague???
I don’t know if you can get it but I recently watched a good series about The Great Plague, now believed to be spread by clothes & body lice and not so much rats.
Well buddy, give it about a month and you will see what happens when hospitals get overwhelmed en masse, it will not be pretty. I don’t give a damn what government does, when there are dead bodies in the streets the chaos that results costs far more than any temp shutdown. If it wasn’t for the neanderthals among us that are too fcking stupid to wear masks or set a good example by wearing masks the economy wouldn’t be as fcked up than would have been otherwise.
“Bodies in the streets”? Now that might get my attention. You think that is a month away? Let’s check back then!
“Bodies in the streets”
It’s already happened here.
Coronavirus: ‘When coffins lined the streets of my hometown’ link to bbc.co.uk
In the US we don’t do it that way. There is no way we would allow bodies in the street. We’re a modern country, well beyond that. Instead we get refrigerated trucks, and store the bodies in there, where they are out of sight.
NOT the same thing.
You are exactly correct, both in this time, and historically. In prior pandemics there was never a “lockdown”. They did have mask mandates in 1918, and for other pandemics, such as the bubonic plague, there were sanitation measures they imposed. Historically, the thing that is hardest on the economy has always been to do nothing, and areas that did the best job of containing the virus had the least long term economic damage.
Some people seem to think that if the government does nothing, business would be happening at normal levels. Even in the absence of government orders to stay home, people behave differently when cases are high. Where I live we never had a lockdown. Yet, in the Spring my business was off 80%, and in the summer it recovered to -20%, but now it is back to -50%. The only thing that changed was the number of cases. Based on cases alone, we should be worse now than in the Spring, but thanks to a mask mandate, customers now have more confidence to go out than they did in the Spring, so we aren’t off quite as much.
If we all take reasonable precautions to control the spread, the economy will continue to function, more or less. If we don’t, the economy will be harmed, either because of a lockdown, or in spite of the lack of a lockdown.
I suppose there is another alternative we could try. We could do no lockdown, and forbid anyone from talking about it, and ban the release of statistics. Then people wouldn’t know, and they would go about their business anyway, right? Or, maybe not. They actually tried that is Tajikistan and Brazil. Brazil didn’t have the power to stop the release of data, and in Tajikistan they eventually had to confront it.
There’s no fixing dead.
There’s no fixing lung, heart, brain damage.
Money vs. health/life
There are many ways to create income. If you don’t have money today, there are ways of earning it tomorrow.
Very hard to create life from death, health from illness.
There’s no need to fix anything when the total number of deaths supposedly due to Covid is only .08% of the total population in the USA. That’s 263000/340 million * 100.
If you do that, you’ll find the fatality rate to be around 2.2 percent, not your fictitious .08 percent.
For some reason it only posted half my comment. Your math is wrong, you need to divide the number of people who had the virus by the deaths. You took the population of the USA, including the 95% of people who haven’t had the virus, and used that number to get your .08. That’s a misleading way to do it.
It is not!
This is what happens when you treat selfishness as a virtue. You get a bunch of people refusing to wear masks or take any precautions and you end up with a wildly out of control virus. I live in Los Angeles, a place most would describe as being a hotbed of the left, but even here on any given day I see barely half the people wearing masks or social distancing and the covid numbers here are skyrocketing.
Speaking of LA. You should think about moving! You’ll have less stress worrying about all the people that refuse to “comply” with the orders.
Underground parties continue to take place during pandemic
FOX 11
26 Nov 2020
You’d think “complying” with the “orders” would be in people’s self interest too, but no, this is ‘Murica, the land of mental toddlers who won’t do anything they don’t want to do because you can’t “make” them. Meanwhile we’re on our way to 4000+ deaths a day before the end of the year.
It’s like every day is Sept 11! Whoo hooo!
“You’d think “complying” with the “orders” would be in people’s self interest too, but no, this is ‘Murica, the land of mental toddlers who won’t do anything they don’t want to do because you can’t “make” them. Meanwhile we’re on our way to 4000+ deaths a day before the end of the year.”
Keep whining. Maybe someone will give a crap.
Who cares about loss of jobs, bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions, suicides, deaths of any sickness due to restrictions to access conventional medical care? If it prevents even one case of COVID, it’s worth it. After all, we’re all in this together!!! ©
If I add recovered and dead, then divide that into dead, multiply by 100 then you have the death rate. Worldmeter Nov 27 3pm MST: 270k /(7,913k + 270k) * 100 = 3.3 percent.
Insanity. This is just the start. This thing will cause a thousand-fold ruin and death even of the inflated death numbers. Wait until the statistics are in for 2020, all cause death will disappoint, there will be dislocations and offsets in the trends for the regular causes of deaths.
After that it is off to the races. We will be careening from one emergency to the next, and society will be permanently under the control of executive orders passed on from on high… This is going to be like a reorganization at your firm, but then the whole globe …
Won’t happen. Ponder the parable of the “Boy who called wolf” (too many times). Eventually, people will just ignore the orders en masse.