At the peak of the Great Depression in August 1932 Unemployment was 25.5%.

Not as bad as that.

At the peak of the Great Recession in October of 2009 Unemployment was 10%.

Worse than that.

U.S. unemployment rate soars to 14.7 percent, the worst since the Depression era
By Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post
May 8, 2020

The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent in April, the highest level since the Great Depression, as many businesses shut down or severely curtailed operations to try and limit the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

The jobless rate was pushed higher because 20.5 million people abruptly lost their jobs, the Labor Department said Friday, wiping out a decade of job gains in a single month. The staggering losses are roughly double what the nation experienced during the 2007-09 crisis, which had previously been measured as the worst downturn since World War II. But the economic trauma caused by the pandemic has already surpassed that.

As the virus’s rapid spread accelerated in March, President Trump and numerous governors took steps to put the economy in deep freeze through April in an effort to minimize the spread. This led businesses to suddenly shed millions of workers each week. Analysts warn it could take many years to return to the 3.5 percent unemployment rate the nation experienced in February in part because it’s unclear what a new economy will look like even if scientists make progress on a vaccine, testing, and treatment.

Trump, though, claimed in a Fox News interview Friday that there would be a quick rebound.

“Those jobs will all be back, and they’ll be back very soon,” Trump said.

But Trump’s likely opponent in November’s presidential election, former vice president Joe Biden, said in remarks broadcast by NowThis News that the jobs report illustrated “an economic disaster” that was “made worse” in part by the White House’s slow and uneven response to the crisis earlier this year.

Despite the devastating news about layoffs, the stock market rose Friday with the Dow Jones industrial average up nearly 300 points in the afternoon. Stocks have climbed since early April, largely because of record levels of government aid for businesses and optimism that a cure is near. The lesson from the last recession, however, was Wall Street recovered long before the rest of the country.

“This is pretty scary,” said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel. “I’m fearful many of these jobs are not going to come back and we are going to have an unemployment rate well into 2021 of near 10 percent.”
…
Job losses began in the hospitality sector, which shed 7.7 million jobs in April, but other industries were also heavily impacted. Retail lost 2.1 million jobs and manufacturing shed 1.3 million jobs. White-collar and government jobs that typically prove resilient during downturns were also slashed, with firms shedding 2.1 million jobs, and state and local governments losing nearly a million. More state and local government jobs could be slashed in the coming weeks as officials deal with severe budget shortfalls.

There was even 1.4 million layoffs in health care last month, as patients have been putting off dental care, minor surgeries and other things beyond emergency care.

Even though the April unemployment figure was horrific by most accounts, economists say the official government rate almost certainly underestimates the extent of the job losses. The Labor Department said the unemployment rate would have been about 20 percent if workers who said they were absent from work for “other reasons” had been classified as unemployed or furloughed. Some people who stopped looking for work were also not counted in the official rate.

What’s clear so far is that Hispanics, African-Americans, and low-wage workers in restaurants and retail have been the hardest hit by the job crisis. Many of these workers were already living paycheck-to-paycheck and had the least cushion before the pandemic hit.

“Low-wage workers are experiencing their own Great Depression right now,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, co-head of the ADP Research Institute, which focuses on the job and wage trends.

The unemployment rate in April jumped to a record 18.9 percent for Hispanics, 16.7 percent for African-Americans and 14.2 percent for whites.

Women’s unemployment was nearly three points higher than men’s unemployment, another disparity that largely reflects the prevalence of women in hard hit hospitality and retail jobs.

Education has emerged as one of the downturn’s starkest divides. While many highly educated white collar workers have been able to do their jobs from home, low-wage workers don’t have that luxury. The result is workers without any college education are losing their jobs at about four times the rate of their college-graduate peers.

In April, the unemployment rate soared to 21.2 percent for people with less than a high school degree, surpassing the previous all-time high set in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

While Congress has approved nearly $3 trillion in aid, it’s been slow to arrive for many. Millions are still battling outdated websites and jammed phone lines to try to get unemployment aid and a relief check. Economists are urging Congress to act now to ensure aid does not end this summer when the unemployment rate is still likely to be at historic levels.

“This unemployment rate should be a real kick in the pants — and maybe even the face,” said economist Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve staffer and expert on recessions. “Congress has to stay the course on aid until more people are back at work.”

There’s a growing consensus that the economy is not going to bounce back quickly like Trump wants, even as more businesses re-open this month. Many restaurants, gyms, and other firms are only able to operate at limited capacities, and customers are proving to be slow to return as they are fearful of venturing out. Many businesses also won’t survive. All of this means the economy is going to need far fewer workers for months — or possibly years — to come.

“It’s not like turning a light switch and everything goes back to where it was in February,” said Loretta Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, in an interview. “We depopulated everything quickly. Repopulating it will take a lot longer.”

Mester said the best cure for the economy at this point is likely more virus testing, monitoring and investment in a covid-19 treatment. Without those measures, people are unlikely to go out and spend again even if stores and restaurants re-open.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty about the second half of the year,” Mester said. “Consumer confidence has been really, really bad since mid-March.”

Many businesses initially did temporary layoffs because executives believed the shutdowns would be short-lived. About 18 million of the unemployed in April said their layoff was temporary, according to the Labor Department data, versus only about 2 million who said their job loss was permanent. But permanent layoffs are expected to escalate as time goes on. The Labor Department surveyed workers in mid-April.

“This is a catastrophe. When things go over a cliff, they usually they don’t recover quickly,” said David Blanchflower, an economics professor at Dartmouth College.

Like Atrios I find it hard to believe she’s even a Democrat, let alone Left or Progressive. She’s a Pluto/Kleptocratic Neo Liberal Oligarch Corporatist Sell Out and she is doing an objectively bad job currently, whatever her past credentials.

Our old friend dday–

Unsanitized: Pelosi Dials Up a K Street Bailout
by David Dayen, American Prospect
May 7, 2020

I read this interview between Ezra Klein and Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Pramila Jayapal, and I have to say I’m tiring of what amounts to a bunch of excuses for how progressives have been functionally locked out of policymaking during this crisis. Jayapal sniffs that “it’s a lot easier to be on the outside and to be pure and never having to make compromises,” and says that there aren’t enough progressives willing to use their power to stop legislation outright. She essentially says that, as long as there’s a bone in there, members can be easily picked off.

But the problem isn’t about compromise, it’s about invisibility. Nancy Pelosi has run the House of Representatives by fiat for close to two months, and there hasn’t been a single word of protest as she locks every other member of the Democratic caucus out of policymaking and hands them take-it-or-leave-it legislation to rubber stamp. If Jayapal has ever objected to that you sure wouldn’t know.

As Ezra points out, instead of organizing around one thing, progressives supply 100-item wish lists that everyone knows won’t be fulfilled. This has two consequences: the wish lists show progressives are not completely serious about governing, and the leadership can always pick like 2 of the 100 out of the list and give members something to justify voting for a bad bill.

Meanwhile, Pelosi has been talking about what she’ll add to the next bill, and it’s relatively unconstrained by wish lists. One of the elements is changing the eligibility standards for PPP small business loans to include 501(c)(4) and (c)(6) nonprofit organizations. You might know (c)(6) organizations by another name: lobbyists. Unbelievably, K Street has asked for a bailout and is on the road to getting it. I mean lobbyists are good at lobbying, I guess.

As far as I can tell, lobbyists have not stopped lobbying amid the crisis. There’s been a “frenzy” of lobbying around Mitch McConnell’s desire for a corporate liability shield from coronavirus-related lawsuits, for example. Why do high-powered lobby shops need a free $10 million per firm, exactly? Also, PPP will be out of money by the time any bill passes. Does tweaking eligibility signal giving more to this program, in part to just shovel money at lobbying firms?

Meanwhile, Jayapal’s bill to guarantee payroll support from the government for the duration of the crisis was “very worthy of consideration,” said Pelosi. That’s code for “nice work but it’s not getting in the bill.”

The House Democratic slogan is “for the people.” And that’s selectively true. Pelosi listens to some people, powerful people. And she pays lip service to others. She does this because she knows she can get away with it. There’s been essentially no dissent from those on the losing end of that equation. The House still doesn’t even have remote voting in place, and caucuses are doing Zoom calls rather than official hearings. Hundreds of members of Congress representing hundreds of millions of people have been disenfranchised. If there’s state and local government aid in a future bill (if it ever happens), progressives are going to shrug and support something with a lobbyist bailout in it. You can see it now.

If you funnel all lawmaking through one person, you’re going to get things laundered through a certain perspective that has a likelihood of occasionally being myopic. The K Street bailout is the dumbest political maneuver you could possibly make right now. Businesses already have access to insanely generous support at the federal level; the Federal Reserve has propped up their equity and credit markets. Who do you think pays lobbyists? The PPP is an underweighted program that isn’t going to save most small businesses, it’s not even designed to do that. All you’re doing by adding lobbyists to it is stoking public anger. And the anger is well-placed; lobbyists really don’t deserve free money right now.

But when there’s no pressure whatsoever on the one-woman Congress, you stumble into mistakes like this. Surely progressive lawmakers don’t like being alienated from their professional duties in this fashion. Maybe they should say something.

There’s more and it’s all useful, you should really click through.

I now hold Omnipotence. What should I do with such Almighty power? The answer to that is actually quite simple- anything I want. Anything. I am incapable of error. Any result that displeases me I can simply reverse. There is nothing I need to worry on, for I am Thanos. And Thanos is supreme. Supreme.

The Universe will now be set right. Made over to fit my unique view of what should be. Let Nihilism reign.

Republicans now want us to embrace mass death
By Paul Waldman, Washington Post
May 7, 2020

The message from President Trump and Republicans on the novel coronavirus has gone through multiple phases, each as misleading and/or bizarre as the last. First they told us the virus would barely touch us. Then they said it was serious but Trump’s management would quickly make it disappear. Then they said it could have been worse, and anyway it isn’t Trump’s fault.

Now they’re arriving at what may be the most appalling message of all:

Sure, hundreds of thousands of Americans may die. But suck it up, America: We’ve got to get the economy going.
…

• “There’ll be more death” as we resume economic activity, says President Trump, but “we have to get our country back.”
• The White House may pursue a strategy of lying about the number of Americans dying, plus spreading conspiracy theories so people disbelieve what they hear about the death toll. “A senior administration official said he expects the president to begin publicly questioning the death toll as it closes in on his predictions for the final death count and damages him politically,” reports Axios.
• According to the Associated Press, “The Trump administration has shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.” The administration apparently wants states to figure out how to do this largely on their own while Trump encourages them to remove lockdown orders whether they are prepared or not.
• The states rushing to reopen do not meet even the modest guidelines the Trump White House issued about when it would be safe to do so.
• Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), who is eager to lift his state’s lockdown order, “shut down the work of academic experts predicting the peak of the state’s coronavirus outbreak was still about two weeks away.” Better just not to know how many people are going to die.
• The Ohio government is asking employers to report workers who refuse to return to work because of safety concerns so the state can take away their unemployment benefits.
• Iowa issued a similar warning to workers: Risk your life or lose your benefits.
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said on a secretly recorded phone call that he was well aware that reopening businesses now would increase coronavirus transmissions. “The fact of the matter is, pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopening … that it actually will lead to an increase in spread.” But he’s opening up the state anyway.
• Trump signed an executive order declaring meatpacking plants “critical infrastructure” so that they stay open, even though there are now 10,000 covid-19 cases associated with such plants; workers at 170 facilities in 29 states have tested positive. But the president is getting personally involved to make sure there are enough burgers at Wendy’s.

When you point out how insane it is to be rushing headlong into a resumption of economic and social activity while the virus continues to spread and about 2,000 Americans die from it every day, you’re likely to be told that you’re trivializing the suffering of those who have lost their incomes or their businesses.

But the problem is that we can’t decide to allow huge numbers of Americans to die in order to save the economy, because allowing huge numbers of Americans to die is exactly what will prevent us from being able to save the economy.

If we throw open the doors of every business, we’ll almost certainly see a second wave of infections — one that could be even worse than what we’re experiencing now — and then we’ll just have to close down all over again.

It’s almost impossible to overstate what an appalling dereliction of duty it is that the Trump administration, having screwed up its pandemic response so spectacularly, is now essentially washing its hands of the whole effort, no longer bothering to try to enact a coordinated nationwide testing and tracing system, and just telling everyone to get back to work.

Meanwhile, the idea that we’re just going to have to accept tens or hundreds of thousands more Americans dying is becoming distressingly common among Republicans. “There are more important things than living,” says Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

We’re moving toward an utterly horrifying partisan divide, in which Democrats want to contain the virus so that we’re able to get the economy back on its feet, while Republicans decide that the only brave and manly thing to do is to stop worrying about the virus and “get back to normal” immediately, no matter how many Americans it kills. In fact, we may soon reach the point where dismissing all those deaths is precisely how you show your loyalty to Trump.

I’m sure there are plenty of Republicans who know what a moral disaster this is. But they’ve decided they have to follow Trump’s lead and praise him for the great job he’s doing, no matter how catastrophic it has actually been. And we haven’t even seen the worst of it.