Tag: Trump botched COVID-19 response tanked the U.S. economy

COVID-19 recession: One of America’s deepest downturns was also its shortest after bailout-driven bounceback

The Conversation Logo

Thanks to a roaring economy, plunging joblessness and a consumer spending spree, it probably won’t come as a surprise that the COVID-19 recession is officially over.

We didn’t know this, formally, however, until July 19, 2021, when a group of America’s top economists determined that the pandemic recession ended two months after it began, making it the shortest downturn on record.

As an economist who has written a macroeconomics textbook, I was eagerly waiting to know the official dates. This is in part because I recently asked my Boston University MBA students to make guesses, and we all wanted to know who was closest to the mark. While many of my students ended up nailing it, I was off by a month. Continue reading.

New study blows up GOP talking point that cutting unemployment benefits early will push people to find work

AlterNet Logo

In right-wing conservative and libertarian ideology — and even among some centrist Blue Dog Democrats — there is a widely held belief that having a social safety net encourages people to be unproductive. And unemployment benefits, according to that school of thought, make people complacent about looking for work. But new analysis from the employment website Indeed suggests that cutting off unemployment benefits early does not make people find work any faster.

Indeed’s analysis comes at a time when many Republican-led states are opting out of enhanced unemployment benefits that came in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession that it caused.

Indeed’s analysis measures clicks on job posts. CNBC reporter Greg Iacurci quotes Ann Elizabeth Konkel, an economist for Indeed, as saying that “people in those states” — meaning GOP-led states — “are less likely to be searching than your average jobseeker right now.” Continue reading.

It’s not a ‘labor shortage.’ It’s a great reassessment of work in America.

Washington Post logo

Hiring was much weaker than expected in April. Wall Street thinks it’s a blip, but there could be much deeper rethinking of what jobs are needed and what workers want to do on a daily basis.

From Wall Street to the White House, expectations were high for a hiring surge in April with potentially a million Americans returning to work. Instead, the world learned Friday that just 266,000 jobs were added, a massive disappointment that raises questions about whether the recovery is on track.

President Biden’s team has vowed that its massive stimulus package will recover all the remaining jobs lost during the pandemic in about a year, but that promise won’t be kept unless there’s a big pickup in hiring soon. There are still 8.2 million jobs left to recover. At the same time, business leaders and Republicans are complaining that there is a “worker shortage,” and they largely blame the more generous unemployment payments and stimulus checks for making people less likely to take low-paying fast food and retail jobs again. Democratic economists counter that companies could raise pay if they really wanted workers back quickly.

One way to make sense of this weak jobs report is to do what Wall Street did and shrug it off as an anomaly. Stocks still rose Friday as investors saw this as a blip. They think there is just a lag in hiring and more people will return to work as they get vaccinated. And they point out oddball months have occurred before, especially with some weird quirks in the Labor Department’s seasonal adjustments. Continue reading.

Federal judge vacates CDC’s eviction moratorium

The Hill logo

A federal judge on Wednesday vacated a nationwide freeze on evictions that was put in place by federal health officials to help cash-strapped renters remain in their homes during the pandemic.

The ruling was a win for a coalition of property owners and realtors, who brought one of several challenges against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium, which was first enacted under former President Trump and later extended through June.

In a 20-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich, who was appointed by Trump, ruled that the agency exceeded its authority with the temporary ban.  Continue reading.

The $50 billion race to save America’s renters from eviction

Washington Post logo

With judges ruling against a federal eviction ban, pressure mounts on the Biden administration to distribute billions in aid to renters

The Biden administration again extended a federal moratorium on evictions last week, but conflicting court rulings on whether the ban is legal, plus the difficulty of rolling out nearly $50 billion in federal aid, mean the country’s reckoning with its eviction crisis may come sooner than expected.

The year-old federal moratorium — which has now been extended through June 30 — has probably kept hundreds of thousands or millions of people from being evicted from their apartments and homes. More than 10 million Americans are behind on rent, according to Moody’s, easily topping the 7 million who lost their homes to foreclosure in the 2008 housing bust.

Despite the unprecedented federal effort to protect tenants, landlords have been chipping away at the moratorium in court. Six lawsuits have made their way before federal judges — with three ruling in support of the ban and three calling it illegal. Continue reading.

Jen Psaki Brilliantly Rips GOP For Their Hypocritical Concern The Relief Bill Will Have On The Deficit

President Joe Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki shut down Republican’s concern for the deficit by hurling a question right back at the GOP for their hypocrisy.

A reporter addressed Psaki at a recent press briefing, saying the GOP argued this was the sixth package and already added to a “deficit that’s already a trillion dollars this year alone.”

The reporter asked:

“What do you say to that criticism, that ultimately this type of a sweeping piece of legislation will be a drag on the economy down the line?”

“Well, I would say to them we’re in the midst of twin crises, from the pandemic to an economic downturn that is impacting tens of millions of people in this country,” she began. Continue reading.

Biden’s COVID Package Is Overwhelmingly Popular. Republicans Hate It Anyway.

Huff Post logo

“I would be surprised if there was support in the Republican caucus if the bill comes out at $1.9 trillion,” said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

Polls show President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package is overwhelmingly popular with the American people, but that isn’t stopping Republicans from lining up against it.

According to a survey conducted by The Economist/YouGov, 66% of Americans back Biden’s plan, which includes $1,400 stimulus checks, added unemployment assistance, an expanded child tax credit, and hundreds of billions of dollars for schools and vaccine distribution. A survey released Tuesday by Morning Consult showed the plan polling even higher, at 76% with all Americans, including 60% of Republicans. 

Congressional bills rarely see this kind of public support, especially in a political atmosphere as divided as this one. Continue reading.

GOP not worried about voting against popular relief bill

The Hill logo

Republicans are dismissing the idea that they’ll be punished at the ballot box for voting against President Biden‘s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.

The relief measure is expected to get few, if any, GOP votes as it moves through Congress in the coming weeks. Democrats are trying to pressure Republicans into voting for the package, touting polls that show it’s popular with the public.

Republicans counter that much of the bill is focused on Democrats’ longstanding priorities rather than coronavirus relief. And strategists note that it’s unclear whether voters will be thinking about the relief package closer to the midterm elections, which are more than a year and a half away.  Continue reading.

Leaked Memo Shows GOP Leadership Whipping Opposition To $1400 Relief Bill

House Republican leadership on Friday urged every GOP lawmaker to vote against President Joe Biden’s coronavirus relief legislation, mocking the proposal as “Pelosi’s Payoff to Progressives Act,” according to a leaked memo issued by House Minority Whip Steve Scalise and obtained by The Hill.

Because Democrats control the House, the bill doesn’t need Republican votes to pass.

However, by trying to get GOP lawmakers to oppose the bill, Republicans are making a risky bet that voting against a piece of legislation that a recent poll shows more than two-thirds of voters support is good politics.

In fact, polls show that the very things House Republicans are condemning in the bill are overwhelmingly popular with the electorate. Continue reading.

When Women Lose All the Jobs: Essential Actions for a Gender-Equitable Recovery

Center for American Progress logo

The tumultuous year of 2020 may be over, but the coronavirus pandemic and the significant financial insecurity facing many women and their families are not. As the year closed out, the nation’s employment numbers for December revealed that the nonfarm payroll job losses for the month were entirely borne by women.2 This development, while unique to December, is emblematic of the disproportionate damage to women’s employment that occurred during the year: Women and their families, who were already treading water before the pandemic,3are bearing the brunt of this crisis.

Over the course of the first 10 months of the pandemic, women—particularly women of color—have lost more jobs than men as industries dominated by women have been hit the hardest.4Overall, women have lost a net of 5.4 million jobs during the recession5—nearly 1 million more job losses than men.6 The job losses in December are a stark illustration of these trends: Black, Hispanic, and Asian women accounted for all of women’s job losses that month, and 154,000 Black women dropped out of the labor force entirely.7 This push of job losses, combined with the pull of increased caregiving at home,8 has created a recession in which more women have been affected, leading Dr. C. Nicole Mason to dub it the first ever “she-cession.”9 Congress and the federal government’s failure to act immediately has only further jeopardized families’ fragile economic security and has the potential to create lasting harm for women’s careers and the U.S. economy as a whole.

But these outcomes are not inevitable. They are the result of policymakers’ choices—frequently choices not to fix systemic inequalities, modernize workplace standards, create a robust social safety net, or invest in caregiving. The COVID-19 recession is different from past economic downturns and will require different solutions than traditional recovery responses. Women and their families urgently need bold, structural policy changes that prioritize their economic security in order to ensure a broad and deep recovery—one on which the success of the entire U.S. economy rests. Lawmakers seeking to create a gender-equitable recovery must pass immediate COVID-19 relief and effective, permanent policies outlined in this brief that support women’s work and caregiving in the long term, including: Continue reading.