This week has started off with The Labor Department announcing that over one million new unemployment claims were filed since last Thursday, meaning that, so far, over 58 million Americans have filed for unemployment over the past 23 weeks. Today, we are going to present you with a summary of updated data from the real economy, disclosing the consequences of the economic collapse in our daily lives, and why this meltdown is far from ending.
Before 2020, the previous all-time claims for a single week happened during the 1982 Recession, with around 695,000 newly unemployed Americans at its highest weekly peak. Weirdly enough, both the government and the media are trying to make it seem like 1.1 million weekly claims are “good news”, distorting the reading on US layoffs provided by the report, by affirming that continuing claims, which represent all Americans still receiving benefits with a one-week lag, fell “sharply” to 14.8 million from 15.5 million the previous week, and that is what economists are focusing on, because it ultimately indicates that over the past three weeks 2 million laid-off workers were rehired.
If these so-called economists are focusing on a 0,7 million weekly “recovery”, while 1.1 million claims were filed last week, they’re either ignoring the fact that over 30% of rehired employees are laid-off a second time months or weeks after they return to their posts, or things have gotten so bad that they’re trying to look less desperate by praising every derisory upturn as if something is actually improving – when clearly it isn’t. Maybe both options are valid.
Even if there were no more claims in 2020, this would still be the worst year for unemployment in all of US history by a colossal margin. If that doesn’t configure as an economic cataclysm, nothing else does. Each one of these numbers represents one life that is just trying to make it through the month or even the week with a roof above their heads and food on the table for their families. It’s not only a matter of data, it’s a matter of lives, so our leaders should be taking this issue more seriously.
Unfortunately, hundreds of retail companies that have filed for bankruptcy since the beginning of the year. Moreover, the worst “retail apocalypse” in the US history will also compromise the long-term existence of shopping malls.
All these factors will increase the number of layoffs and worsen the already fragile economic state of Main Street. On the other hand, as if this was all a win-and-lose game, an ultra-rich club is stockpiling cash in extraordinary amounts. Tiger 21, a group of over 800 multimillionaire investors in the US, reported that its members are hoarding cash at unprecedented levels, raising their cash holdings to 19% of their total assets on concerns over the economic consequences of the sanitary outbreak in the country, which have gone up about 12% since the start of the crisis, and a quarter of their members of the group are expecting the unfolding of the crisis to continue until the end of June 2021.
Obviously, apart from profiting from the economic downfall, this signalizes that many of them know that there is much more trouble to come for the financial markets, so they’re trying to protect themselves from further repercussions. While the stock market is expecting a couple more trillions to feed corporate greed, workers all over the country are uncertain if they’ll have means to feed themselves and their families into the coming months. The government that doesn’t have money to pay unemployment checks is the same that injects trillions into the stock market, just for the sake of good relations with power-hungry CEOs.
The more this narrative unrolls the more nauseating it gets. We’re living a nation of unrighteousness and transgression whose people were left fighting for crumbs while the 1% thrives from the power of our blood sweat and tears. Prepare for the storm, because it is coming for us.