Please consider the Trump administration’s plea to states: Keep Mum About Unemployment Stats.
The Trump administration is asking state labor officials to delay releasing the precise number of unemployment claims they are fielding, an indication of how uneasy policymakers are about further roiling a stock market already plunging in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
In an email sent Wednesday, the Labor Department instructed state officials to only “provide information using generalities to describe claims levels (very high, large increase)” until the department releases the total number of national claims next Thursday.
The email, which was shared with The New York Times, noted that the reports were monitored closely by financial markets and should therefore remain embargoed. “States should not provide numeric values to the public,” wrote Gay Gilbert, the administrator of the department’s Office of Employment Insurance.
Ms. Gilbert has worked at the Labor Department under presidents of both parties, and there has been no indication that she was urged by political appointees to make the request. But President Trump has privately expressed irritation at the dire predictions of some of his advisers, most notably when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers that unemployment could reach 20 percent this year.
Robert O’Brien, the [Pennsylvania] deputy secretary of labor and industry, said the government had been overwhelmed by a flood of unemployment insurance claims — 180,000 just in the last few days. He said that was far more than the state usually gets in a whole month.
The situation may be even more dire in Washington, the first epicenter of the contagion in the U.S. State officials there would only say they are seeing an “even more dramatic increase this week” after unemployment claims soared 150 percent last week from the week before.
Who Made this Moronic Decision?
Given that communication is supposed to travel through Vice President Mike Pence it should at least be at that level.
Apparently the data is better if no one sees it.
Yeah right.
In practice, this makes people more nervous about what the government is hiding.
Regardless of who made the decision, Trump is responsible for it. If Gay Gilbert made the decision and Trump does not agree then she should be fired on the spot.
If Trump agrees with it or ordered it, he is a fool to think the data can or should be suppressed.
People will now demand to see the data, and rightfully so.
Estimating the Unemployment Rate
In case you missed it, please see 9% of the US Has Been Laid Off Due to the Coronavirus.
I crunched the SurveyUSA poll numbers and if they are accurate estimate an unemployment rate of 12.0% with the U6 Underemployment rate at a staggering 39.7%.
If close, it’s no wonder Trump wants to hide the numbers.
What’s next, banning polls?
Meanwhile …
California Governor issues statewide order to ‘stay at home’ effective Thursday evening https://t.co/UHrx2GW3gP
— CNBC (@CNBC) March 20, 2020
That seals the deal on a massive spike in the unemployment rate.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
For Massachusetts:
The state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development was flooded with unemployment claims Monday (March 16).
There were 19,884 unemployment claims filed Monday, more than four times the amount for the entire first week of March.
For the week ending March 7, the latest figures available, 4,667 people filed claims
“What’s next, banning polls?”: The Greatest Stable Genius will launch a war somewhere!
“The Trump administration is asking state labor officials to delay releasing the precise number of unemployment claims they are fielding, an indication of how uneasy policymakers are about further roiling a stock market already plunging in response to the coronavirus outbreak.”
Governor Cuomo has ordered all non essential businesses in New York State to close. Even without a precise accounting of the unemployment that will cause, the stock market would be bound to notice that means a lot of people and businesses won’t be working. The stock market would expect other states to follow Cuomo’s move, as well.
“That seals the deal on a massive spike in the unemployment rate.”
There are so many exceptions to this. California tech economy will stay in tact as it is considered infrastructure and exempt. There are so many loopholes for infrastructure. If you an show that you need some employees at work and provide services to infrastructure then you are exempt. This is a joke of a quarantine compared to Wuhan. Some Chinese doctors went to Italy and laughed at their quarantine. Literally every shop and restaurant was open and people were walking around like nothing was going on.
“The US dept of Labor told states to suppress specific unemployment claim data.”
…
And where are Pelosi / Schumer on this??
“And where are Pelosi / Schumer on this??”
….Busy peeking at the suppressed prereleases, and telling their donors what to sell where…
“What’s next, banning polls?”
Why are you giving his sycophants ideas?
Trump thinks he’s Putin,that the US is the USSA or the new vo Soviet Union, Chump has embraced MMT and neo fascism
He’s no Putin. But one out of two ain’t bad….
@MishTalk look out your window …. they rolled a train filled Army jeeps through Barrington last night.
The Left/Progressives wanted their panic, we’ll they got it.
Why aren’t you screaming about the congress members Ds and Rs who unloaded their stocks weeks ago based on their secret intelligence info on China fighting the Wuhan-Virus?
Why aren’t you getting pissed off about these ‘mandatory lockdowns’; martial law is coming?
And by the way, all this martial law is highly anti-constitutional … martial law was designed for/is for mobilization against a foreign adversary NOT for a danger exposure every person can control for themselves by social distancing/self-quarantining!
No, you are pissed about not getting the data to use to prognosticate about the economy/markets…
Where are your principles and priorities?
Same ole same ole if you like the numbers you use the numbers if you don’t like them you say the numbers are bad ,Mish is good at this . My belief is the death numbers are probably fairly accurate but the infection is way under reported . Of course that would put the death rate way lower than currently being hyped .
The death rate is going down but if it ends up where it is South Korea, then it will be 0.8% which is 4x more than the flu The idea is to limit the spread so hospitals don’t get inundated with patients that need care. The death rate isn’t the concern right now.
The death rates and contagion measures are highly variable depending on if your health system gets over-run, how good your country does with test-track-and isolate, how good of a job your country does with social distancing, and how fast useful medicines get produced and utilized. S. Korea gets an A+ across the board. US gets an F, F, C, F. Our fatality numbers will prob be closer to Italy’s than S. Korea.
Next Thursday’s US national data will be delayed and/or inaccurate
Those of you that doubt China’s number–I get it. But there is no leakage of stories or rumors of mass illness and deaths outside of the Hubei region. There are no instant “hospitals” being built. There is no secondary evidence of the spread beyond Hubei.
China needs to let the other Asian countries in on the secret to their success, because many of them are struggling.
Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand are all reporting more new infections than China. That seems rather unbelievable, to say the least.
And why pray tell would they be booting journalist out? Its clear if they do not have leverage on you to report what they want you are booted out of the country.
Do you think that if large portions of China were experiencing the same disaster as Wuhan you wouldn’t hear of it? There is a lot of leakage these days, even around a controlled media and internet. I’m positive that the Hubei death numbers are under-reported but I am also pretty sure that the other provinces remain relatively unscathed.
You may think it unbelievable, but massive testing, tracking and drastic quarantine and scaled-up treatment are effective. Without widely available treatments or vaccine, that’s all there is at this point.
These other countries you mentioned, there is a difference between HK, Singapore and South Korea and the others. HK and Singapore have relatively authoritarian government, and they along with South Korea have a lot of resources and testing to stay on top of the outbreaks. The other Asian countries (and the rest of the lesser developed countries of the world) will fall into the pit of massive disease and death.
Remember that low numbers can indicate a lack of testing or an effective response.
Only the death rates show the difference.
explain how it is even remotely possible the virus has spread exponentially to every US state but only one china province.
“Things are going to be getting very real this year, even as some continue to deny reality, to an almost astonishing degree of self-absorption and denial.” –Jesse
link to tomtom.com
Hey not reporting numbers is working for China, why not us? I mean do we really believe their numbers? Yet I see people continue to quote how great a job they have done and how can we replicate their success, and even use their data as a basis to predict our outcome….I do not agree with suppressing the data, but I do not see an outrage on China’s blatant suppression.
Yep. People claim that the US and China have an antagonistic relationship, but we have a nice symbiosis going now. We don’t have to count our unemployed, and they don’t have to count their sickened and/or dead.
Stalin would be proud to see his “no person, no problem” philosophy so widely adopted nearly 70 years after his death!
Mass testing is, was and will be the way to contain this virus. Otherwise, with asymptomatic transmission, there is no hope of containment with cases in 50 states.
Mass testing of an asymptomatic illness… did you just say that?
It is IMPOSSIBLE to test everyone simultaneously.
So your testing is useless for anyone other than those sick enough to NEED hospitalization, ie to ensure the limited resources are used in those who will need it.
Testing every paranoid person with a cough is insane.
Even China doesn’t have testing capacity to get a good picture, once it is as widespread as in current America.
It would be nice if America could show the rest of the world Who’s the Boss of Automated Healthcare Provisioning by figuring out a way to distribute and collect home test kits to everyone, and build an infrastructure able to process all the returns in a timely manner, but you’d need 1000x South Korean testing infrastructures to do that.
So the Wuhan response, of nailing everyone inside and sloshing around enough disinfectant to risk floods on account of it, until no new cases detected for three weeks, is really the only way now. Aside from just letting it tear through the population and hope infection builds sufficient immunity to slow it down a bit.
For those of you thinking this will be a V shaped recovery, I admire your optimism.
First, there is no clear end date to the restrictions placed by the attempt to control the spread of the virus. Look at China–due to early and drastic intervention they confined the illness to one province. In the US, every state has cases–where can the fire-break be made? Are the places that are economically significant in the US already infected?
Second, huge portions of the economy are dead in the ditch. Many large businesses and almost all of those small businesses that are now closed operated on momentum that is now interrupted. Start-up effort and costs will be monumental–beyond the reach of many.
They need to declare a moratorium – for a period of time- on all mortgage payments for homes and business building and any rents tied to them – with the Fed gov/FED picking up the interest payments on the mortgage loans.
R.E. the sickening insider trading by Congress over the last 2 months – They should all be prosecuted and jailed. (right).
All Congressional members should show us their last 2 months of trading. Let’s see how our jack booted leaders did for themselves.
Insider trading law(s) do NOT apply to members of Congress. So now what do you do?
…Get rid of government, and string them up in light poles. High enough to maintain a 6 feet safe distance from passersby….
And then everyone wonders why there is no trust. I am beyond outraged at level of lying.
America Has a New Coronavirus Testing Problem: We’re Out of Chemicals
You cannot plan for a 100year pandemic – especially when you’ve shipped most of your production over to a foreign adversary… to save $
In such volatile times I’m ok waiting until Thursday to get a legitimate number. We all know it’s going to be awful.
This is a very unusual situation. Nearly all the hits to business the economy is going through are due to quarantining. It’s not typical ‘business cycle’ stuff. Stats designed to present a picture of typical cyclical ebbs and flows will – even assuming they are accurate which is another issue – perhaps distort or exaggerate what is going on in this pretty much one-off type situation.
Today Trump said he thinks we are going to go through a V-bottom experience, in other words a sharp spike down (both on the charts and in economic activity due to quarantining) followed by a just as sharp spike up. There is a chance he will be proven correct in this.
If he is wrong and we are going into a longer term slowdown as the global supply chain is reconfigured, then his Presidency is possibly toast, and this will be an extreme challenge for the country.
It should all be clear within a month or two.
I deliberately don’t mention the massive debts and structural issues which long ago I had to humbly confess to not understanding at all. I thought the system would crash down in the 70’s and every decade thereafter and have been wrong all the time. I still think it should crash down now but have given up thinking about that one way or the other at all. Now: if this crisis can somehow get the US petrodollar business sorted, annul the Fed and go to national credit, cut the USG down to size (like 75% less), well that would be fine and dandy. But not holding breath….
Damn. Trump is now Hoover. I was hoping this wouldn’t happen, but between the FED and this disease, yeah…November isn’t looking good so good. For either candidates, imo.
Trump got into office because Hilary lost. It would be poetic justice if Trump is ushered out because he loses to whomever the opponent is. I dont think he will go so quietly like the warden at Shawshank prison.
Will BLS even report the number on April 3rd ? If not welcome to Amerika.
Keep in mind that will for the week of the 12th, not nearly as bad as this week. Its the May number that will be nasty.
Sad to say but the more I see of Trump and coronavirus the more it seems like he doesnt want to help. We kind of know the origins of the virus but we arent 100% sure. It looks and sounds ridiculous to say but if someone were to create the perfect virus that stays alive long enough to spread and wreak havoc on the system then this would be pretty close. If Trump can cancel an election I believe he would. Should this extend into election day I have no doubt the election will be postponed or cancelled.
We’re 100% sure the virus originated in China.
We’re only 100% sure it was first detected in China.
Which makes it probable that it originated there, but not certain.
Heck, while very remote, there is a non zero probability it originated in space and fell down in Wuhan….
More realistically, the Chinese are, post SARS, unusually on the alert for, and good at detecting, novel viruses. Few other places would have picked up on it, at such an early stage. Increasing the probability that it had been in low level circulation somewhere else, but was only detected once it started infecting Chinese.
Being the “Chicago” (transport hub) of China, and with the sheer amount of travel into and out of China pre outbreak, it first being detected in Wuhan, doesn’t conclusively prove Wuhan was the first place it infected a human.
Not that it really matters epidemologically. China sure had the first sizable outbreak, and as far as I know there is no indication that any genome sequenced anywhere else, looks to have descended from anywhere but one of the Chinese outbreaks.
As more genomes are sequenced, more light may be shed on exactly where all the outbreaks got seeded from, though.
lmao almost 40% nothing to see here move along. We’re so screwed.
I am expecting states to impose a light form of marshal law over the weekend. California did it today so then all the governors have to follow.
Why hasn’t Trump gone Howard Beale yet? Yell out the window as loud as possible “It’s the end of the world as we know it! Find a cave and shelter in place!”. Seriously do we really need to add more fuel to the panic fire? I am glad Trump is trying to reduce the panic, and I’m tired of pandemic news. What else ya got?
He probably sold his stocks already, that’s why he’s not panicking 😉
He was probably texting Jared and Ivanka to “sell EVERYTHING”, while saying things like “my good friend Xi has this under control”
Denying the numbers should spook the market, for sure. I’d guess we’ll have another big drop tomorrow. Every time Trump tries to “calm” the markets, he scares the hell out of them. If he treated them as noise, and just dealt with the problems, they would be a lot calmer.
How has it come to this? Next week, no country will allow entry to Americans.
50 years pat the last remnant of any constraint on money printing.
100 years past The Fed.
150 years past The Progressive Movement.
Trump now proclaims himself a wartime president, and…
“The first casualty when war comes is truth.”
Republican Senator Hiram W Johnson (1917).
I believe Trump “got the cart before the horse” and he is “on a roll” now (and always has been). Bigly.
Wall Street has its own set of number crunchers and trend trackers. The BLS just gives them reassurance their methodologies are correct. Grass roots unemployment data will be generated through social media apps. A time series of satellite imaging of factory parking lots is already being used to estimate economic activity.
Doesn’t matter. It will come out eventually.
Of course, eventually people will look out their windows and see all their neighbors also home all day every day. Sadly I have to drive through California on the 30th and it is 1,000 miles from my place to Yuma so I will have to stop somewhere for the night probably around Bakersfield. I wish there were a better way, but you can’t trust the weather in the mountains this time of year, and the grades between Sacramento and Reno are steep, now that I have to haul my car behind the truck because the airline cancelled my flight plans, I don’t want to be one of those moving trucks making 20 mph going up towards Trukee and then careening down the even steep side into Nevada.
I am thinking we will see refineries shuttered, they will have to furlough production as the storage tanks get filled up and nobody driving. At some point we could see sub dollar gas, because they will have to get rid of some of that summer fuel when there are billions of unsold barrels come late summer and they have to switch to winter blending. The US only last year brought massive new storage capacity online, but you can only store gasoline for so long till it loses it’s power. Nice opportunity to do neglected maintenence though.
As we saw in 2008-2009, US gov felt it was imperative to keep unemployment figures in single digit territory and it looks like this hasn’t changed. Does the country really feel better due to more palatable monthly BLS stats?
I was only half joking the other day when I suggested a new hedonic adjustment for pandemics. Looks like this will become reality and we can have fun playing the “what if” game, living in an alternate reality without that pesky coronavirus.
I can at least empathise with kind hearted intentions to soften the blow, but my Darwin prize goes to the kids crowding the beaches for Spring break, and especially their parents.
Kind hearted intentions? So sometimes ignorance is bliss and therefore appropriate? In my experience if you don’t tell people the real facts they will make them up for themselves.
Don’t ever spin my words unless you’re fully prepared to get the result stuck up your ass.
However, upon reflection, I agree with your implication that we should all just screech and scream, running off into the darkness.