U.S. Economy: Job Losses Amid Growing Political Instability
Sheldon Filger-blogger for GlobalEconomicCrisis.com
The Labor Department released its jobs reports for December 2020. It is dismal yet not surprising. In the past month the U.S. shed 140,00 jobs. This is the first monthly contraction in employment numbers since April 2020, and the destruction of millions of jobs in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Though vaccines are slowly being distributed in the United States, having been developed in record time, the nation is currently experiencing the most severe spread of coronavirus, with states responding with further lockdowns and restrictions on economic activity. This portends to further job losses as the Biden administration takes over the White House in a matter of days.
It is not only the Covid-19 contagion that is damaging the American economy. The risk assessment consultancy Eurasia Group lists political division in the United States as the number one global risk, ahead of the Covid pandemic. As if on cue, 48 hours after the release of Eurasia Group’s, report on top global risks, riots erupted within the Capitol building in Washington DC. The growing political stratification within American society, combined with the continuing damaging impact of Covid on economic activity, points to a very negative economic outlook for the United States and inevitably for the entire global economy.