Stress Of Pandemic Reveals Just How Fragile That Booming Economy Was In The First Place
In four weeks, the country has plunged into Great Depression-levels of unemployment, and the swift economic devastation shows just how vulnerable the system was at a time that appeared like great growth and prosperity. “We built an economy with no shock absorbers,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist. “We made a system that looked like it was maximizing profits but had higher risks and lower resiliency.”
The New York Times:
Coronavirus Crisis Underlines Weak Spots In U.S. Economic System
An indelible image from the Great Depression features a well-dressed family seated with their dog in a comfy car, smiling down from an oversize billboard on weary souls standing in line at a relief agency. “World’s highest standard of living,” the billboard boasts, followed by a tagline: “There’s no way like the American Way.” The economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has suddenly hurled the country back to that dislocating moment captured in 1937 by the photographer Margaret Bourke-White. In the updated 2020 version, lines of cars stretch for miles to pick up groceries from a food pantry; jobless workers spend days trying to file for unemployment benefits; renters and homeowners plead with landlords and mortgage bankers for extensions; and outside hospitals, ill patients line up overnight to wait for virus testing. (Cohen, 4/16)
The Associated Press:
Layoffs And Pay Cuts Are Now Striking More White Collar Jobs
First, it was bars, restaurants, hotels. And clothing stores, movie theaters, entertainment venues. And countless small businesses, from bookstores to barber shops. Now, the record-setting flood of layoffs unleashed by the viral outbreak is extending beyond the services industries that bore the initial brunt and are still suffering most. White collar employees, ranging from software programmers and legal assistants to sales associates and some health care workers, are absorbing layoffs or salary cuts. So are workers in other occupations, like construction and real estate. (Rugaber, 4/16)
The Wall Street Journal:
Layoff Alternative Grows In Popularity During Coronavirus
A state-run program that helps businesses cut costs while retaining staff is becoming an increasingly common strategy to fight the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic. State labor departments are seeing a swift increase in employer applications for programs known as workshares that allow companies to reduce worker hours and employees to collect prorated unemployment benefits to help offset lost wages, avoiding full layoffs. (Chaney, 4/17)
The Washington Post:
Roughly A Quarter Of Michigan’s Workforce Is Seeking Unemployment Benefits
Charles Johnson was only supposed to be stuck home for about a week. His manufacturing plant, which makes aluminum parts for Ford pickup trucks, shut its doors in March, like many others in Michigan, to arrest the spread of the novel coronavirus. A week lapsed into a month, after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) closed most businesses statewide. Out of a job for the foreseeable future, and running out of cash, the 46-year-old Johnson joined the ranks of more than 1 million Michigan workers seeking help in a state that’s faced immense economic hardship amid a deadly pandemic. (Romm, 4/16)
NBC News:
Coronavirus Unemployment Numbers Are Staggering. And The Real Number Is Higher.
Like just about every freelance writer I know, my income has become a lot more precarious in the last few weeks as coronavirus precautions have shut down the economy... But I was glad to hear that the government had opened up unemployment benefits to the self-employed as part of the CARES stimulus package. So I logged on to the Illinois website to figure out what to do if the worst happened and I ran out of work. I clicked once, clicked twice, and came to a page with clear instructions. "This portion of the benefits expansion package has not yet been implemented." (Berlatsky, 4/16)
The Associated Press:
Bleak Figures From China And US Show Economic Hit From Virus
Bleak figures from the world’s two largest economies underscore how quickly the coronavirus is delivering a massive economic blow. China on Friday reported GDP shrank 6.8% from a year ago in the quarter ending March, its worst contraction since before market-style economic reforms began in 1979. And in the U.S., the world’s largest economy, the ranks of the unemployed swelled toward levels last seen during the Great Depression. (Perry and McDonald, 4/17)
