Archive

Posts Tagged ‘u.s. jobless claims’

U.S. Job Losses Top 33 Million In Just Seven Weeks

May 8th, 2020 Comments off

The just-released U.S. Labor Department report shows an addition 3.17 million American workers filed jobless claims in just the past week. This means that in a period of only seven weeks the U.S. shed 33.5 million jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The employment picture in the United States is utterly dismal, with no end in sight to the contraction of employment numbers. Though there is wishful thinking on “reopening” the American economy, the reality on the ground shows freefall economic collapse engendered by a health crisis, with no short-term-term solution in sight, except continuation of the slowdown of economic activity.

The news from Europe is equally dire. The Bank of England is forecasting that the UK economy will contract in 2020 due to shutting down economic activity in response to  the coronavirus by  14 percent. According to the Bank of England, this is the nation’s worst economic contraction in three hundred years. In the Eurozone officials forecast a rate of quarterly economic contraction of 7.5 percent.

A global recession  is already underway, at an intensity far beyond that of the 2007-09 Global Financial Crisis. The current Global Economic Crisis created by Covid-19 suggests that a severe global depression is an increasingly likely prospect for the world.

U.S. Economy in Freefall As Jobless Claims Exceed 30 Million and GDP Plummets

April 30th, 2020 Comments off

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released its report on GDP growth for Q 1 of 2020. The numbers were dismal, negative 4.8 percent. Though this was the worst decline experienced by the American economy since 2008, at the height of the Global Financial crisis, it was merely a harbinger of much worse to come. It must be recognized that the impact of the demand destruction inflicted by the Covid-19 pandemic only began to emerge in the last two weeks of Q1.

A more telling pointer of whist to expect in Q2 was the latest jobless claims report issued by the U.S. Labor Department. According  to the report, an additional  3.8 million American workers filed unemployment claims. Cumulatively, this means that during the past 6-weeks more than  30 million U.S. workers have filed jobless claims. In other words, over a period of only six weeks, the U.S. unemployment rate has skyrocketed from 3.5 percent to more than 18 percent. This is an unprecedented rate of accelerated employment contraction. Not even during the Great Depression has the American economy witnessed such appalling statistics.

The collapse of the job market in the United States brings with it a radical contraction in aggregate demand. This would point to the Q2 report showing that, at a minimum, the nation’s GDP will  shrink by more than 20 percent, and possibly as high as 40 percent.

The collapse of the world’s largest economy at unprecedented velocity is only a reflection of a global economic implosion. The Global Economic Crisis will linger after the health crisis  created by the coronavirus has receded. This is indeed the Great Depression of the 21st century.

International Monetary Fund (IMF)Warns Covid-19 Health Crisis Sending Global Economy Into Greatest Collapse Since the Great Depression

April 17th, 2020 Comments off

The IMF has issued a chilling forecast in its just released 2020 World Economic Outlook. According to the report, the world will experience its sharpest downturn in economic activity since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Though the report is projecting a modest recovery in 2021, this is sheer guesswork, as nobody has any idea of the future progression of the health crisis precipitated by the coronavirus.

Dire news emerged from the world’s largest economy in the wake of the sobering IMF report. The Census Bureau reported that retail sales in the United States fell by a staggering 8.7 % in March; this was the steepest decline since the Census Bureau began tracking this data in 1992.

On April 16 the U.S. Labor Department issued its weekly jobless claims report , more than 5.2 million American workers filed new unemployment claims. In a period of only 3-weeks, more than 22 million workers joined the ranks of the unemployed. This eliminates all the employment gains in the American economy over the past decade. And this all occurred in only three-weeks.

Economic and employment data from many other economies, developed and emerging, was equally dismal. This all validates the growing consensus among economists that the global economic crisis created by the unprecedented demand and employment destruction sparked by the covid-19 pandemic will be far worse than the global financial crisis of 2007-08, and may very well rival the Great Depression of the 1930s in its severity.

U.S. Jobless Claims Reach Highest Level In 8 Months

May 5th, 2011 Comments off

In a surprise and disturbing development, weekly unemployment assistance claims in the United States have reached 474,000. This is the largest weekly jobless claims report in eight months, and an increase of about ten percent over the prior week, despite predictions by economists that this week’s jobless report would actually show a drop in unemployment claims.

The current report is a major negative shift from several weeks earlier, when jobless claims dropped below 400,000. The unexpected and rapid acceleration in jobless claims is a clear indicator that the U.S. economy remains mired in deep crisis, with persistent and historically high rates of unemployment.

With the Obama stimulus expenditures running out of steam, a Republican dominated Congress unwilling to further increase deficit spending for more stimulus, and the Federal Reserve’s massive monetary intervention proving to be ineffective in facilitating job creation, all the signs are that the American economy is headed for a double-dip recession.

 

 

 

U.S. Jobless Claims Rise to Highest Level Since April 2010

August 5th, 2010 Comments off

According to the latest data from the U.S. Labor Department, initial unemployment benefit claims reached 479,000 in the last week of July. This reflects an unanticipated increase of 4.1 %, the highest level of initial jobless claims since last April.

The latest jobless claims report from the world’s largest economy make clear that the global economic crisis not only remains a potent reality; the jobs crisis now afflicting most advanced economies make a consumer-led economic recovery impossible. With governments across the globe beginning to transition from deficit-funded stimulus programs to austerity, it is equally clear that sovereigns overloaded with public debt will not be able to compensate for the fall-off in private sector demand much longer.

The latest data on U.S. jobless claims is just another indicator that a double-dip recession is becoming inevitable.