BRACE YOURSELF. I have been a labor economist for a very long time and have never seen anything like this. Here are last week’s initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims. (1/n)pic.twitter.com/fWhljQF9ww
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Initial UI claims jumped from 211,000 three weeks ago to 282,000 two weeks ago to 3.3 *million* last week. That is nearly a 1500% increase in two weeks. (2/n)
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Is the shock-factor of last week’s UI numbers being driven by seasonal adjustments? Nope. Here is the not-seasonally adjusted series. (3/n)pic.twitter.com/EX2pX5cs2m
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Even more disturbing? Last week’s spike in UI claims is just the tip of the iceberg. We estimate that by summer, 14 million workers will lost their jobs due to the
#coronavirus shock. (4/n)https://www.epi.org/blog/the-coronavirus-fiscal-response-should-be-as-big-as-needed-but-current-forecasts-indicate-at-least-2-1-trillion-is-needed-through-2020/ …Show this thread -
Congress is currently debating a $2 trillion
#stimulusbill to help this country through this unprecedented crisis. It will be an important step in our response, but we will need more and better. (5/n)https://www.epi.org/blog/despite-some-good-provisions-the-cares-act-has-glaring-flaws-and-falls-short-of-fully-protecting-workers-during-the-coronavirus-crisis/ …Show this thread -
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Initial UI claims, this time with recession-shading. Stunning how this simply dwarfs the Great Recession. (7/n)pic.twitter.com/xTeykjjguC
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Not-seasonally-adjusted initial UI claims, now with recession shading so you can compare what we are going through right now to earlier recessions. Boggles the mind. (8/n)pic.twitter.com/ISSedqzV9V
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If you read one thing today, read this editorial, it's fantastic. (Spoiler: we did not have to have mass unemployment in this pandemic, it is a monumental policy failure.) (9/n)https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/opinion/covid-economy-unemployment-europe.html …
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This great piece by
@DeanBaker13 demonstrates that we could easily afford to avoid mass layoffs by doing what Denmark has done—paying companies 75 to 90% of workers salaries during the lockdown, provided they don’t lay anyone off. (10/n)https://cepr.net/money-is-not-the-reason-the-u-s-is-not-following-the-danish-model/ …Show this thread
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Remember when the spike the prior week looked huge (the highest level of initial claims since 2017)? Check out the change in scale required to even put the latest initial claims of nearly 3.3 million on the graph. This is the highest level in the history of the series--by a lot.pic.twitter.com/PLXCUDUleW
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Check out how the
@nytimes handled the massive change in scale required to illustrate record breaking numbers of#UnemploymentInsurance claims due to the#coronavirus contraction.pic.twitter.com/nw0YIfKNyw
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