Tag: U.S. economy

‘Sheer lunacy’: Robert Reich explains how COVID-19 pushed Trump’s presidency to the brink of disaster

AlterNet logoDonald Trump said last Thursday’s jobs report, which showed an uptick in June, proves the economy is “roaring back”.

Rubbish. The Labor Department gathered the data during the week of June 12, when America was reporting 25,000 new cases of Covid-19 per day. By the time the report was issued last week, that figure was 55,000.

The economy isn’t roaring back. Just over half of working-age Americans have jobs now, the lowest ratio in over 70 years. What’s roaring back is Covid-19. Until it’s tamed, the economy doesn’t stand a chance. Continue reading.

Trump Boasts Economic ‘Comeback’ With Unemployment Over 11 Percent

Donald Trump took a victory lap on the economy after the monthly jobs report released earlier in the morning showed 4.8 million of the jobs lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic returned in June.

“It’s all coming back. It’s coming back faster, bigger, and better than we ever thought possible,” Trump said in a speech from the White House briefing room on Thursday morning. “These are the numbers. These are not numbers made up by me. These are numbers.”

However, the unemployment rate remains at 11.1 percent — higher than it was at the peak of the Great Recession in 2008 — with 17.8 million Americans still out of work. Continue reading.

After June Job Gains, Still a ‘Deep Hole,’ and New Worries

New York Times logoSome 4.8 million positions were added last month, but renewed shutdowns could accelerate the continuing layoffs.

Employers brought back millions more workers in June as businesses began to reopen across the country. But the recent surge in coronavirus cases is threatening to stall the economic recovery long before it has reached most of the people who lost their jobs.

\U.S. payrolls grew by 4.8 million in June, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the second month of strong gains after April’s huge losses, when businesses laid off or furloughed tens of millions of workers as the pandemic put a large swath of economic activity on ice.

The job growth surpassed economists’ forecasts, and it was broad based, cutting across industries and demographic groups. Continue reading.

Fed officials raised concerns in June that U.S. could enter a much worse recession later this year if coronavirus cases continued to surge

Washington Post logoThe scenario, which officials described as plausible, was revealed in minutes of their June meeting before the surge in cases escalated

Federal Reserve officials raised concerns about additional waves of coronavirus infections disrupting an economic recovery and triggering a new spike in unemployment and a worse economic downturn, according to minutes released Wednesday by the central bank about its June 9-10 meeting.

Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell has repeatedly said that the path out of this recession, which began in February, will depend on containing the virus and giving Americans the confidence to resume normal working and spending habits. But the notes from the two-day meeting reveal how interconnected Fed officials view a prolonged economic recession and the pandemic’s continued spread — and why Powell often asserts that lawmakers will need to do more to carry millions of Americans out of this crisis.

“In light of the significant uncertainty and downside risks associated with the pandemic, including how much the economy would weaken and how long it would take to recover, the staff judged that a more pessimistic projection was no less plausible than the baseline forecast,” the minutes read. “In this scenario, a second wave of the coronavirus outbreak, with another round of strict limitations on social interactions and business operations, was assumed to begin later this year, leading to a decrease in real GDP, a jump in the unemployment rate, and renewed downward pressure on inflation next year.” Continue reading.

Senate reaches deal to extend Paycheck Protection Program hours before it was set to expire

Washington Post logoProspects in the House uncertain for last-minute agreement, which would extend small-business loan program through Aug. 8

The Senate reached a surprise last-minute deal late Tuesday to extend the small-business Paycheck Protection Program through Aug. 8, passing it just hours before the lending program was set to shut down at midnight.

Prospects for the legislation in the House, however, were uncertain. Both chambers are set to adjourn for a two-week recess by week’s end.

The short-term agreement came together in behind-the-scenes negotiations involving Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and others. Continue reading.

Trump tries to plot a political comeback based on the economy. Biden says not so fast.

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s advisers are trying to plot a political turnaround centered on his stewardship of the economy, seeking to exploit a rare issue on which voters trust him as much as Joe Biden and vowing to usher in the “great American comeback” after the country plunged into a financial free fall on his watch.

Biden, under growing pressure from Democratic allies to wage a more aggressive rebuttal, plans to sharpen his economic focus in coming weeks with the rollout of new proposals to stimulate job creation, according to a senior campaign adviser. The campaign also plans to intensify its drive to remind voters of Trump’s sluggish response to the novel coronavirus and the unemployment spike that followed.

The dueling efforts come less than five months before Election Day. By almost every indicator, Trump’s bid for a second term is in peril, with Biden sprinting out to leads in battleground states and into competition in some conservative strongholds. But in a twist, the economy, which has been a bellwether in the modern history of presidential races, is one major domain where voters still give Trump encouraging marks, bolstered by occasional bright spots like Tuesday’s report that retail sales jumped 17.7 percent in May. Continue reading.

The United States economy officially entered a recession in February

NOTE:  This article is being provided free of charge by The Washington Post.

Washington Post logoThe U.S. economy officially entered a recession in February, according to The National Bureau of Economic Research, which announced that a 128-month expansion officially ended then. The expansion, which began in June 2009 after a recession, was the longest on record.

The coronavirus outbreak began in China in December and spread to the U.S. in January, although it wasn’t until mid-March that the WHO declared it a global pandemic and President Trump declared it a national emergency.

The World Bank estimates that global gross domestic product will shrink 5.2 percent in 2020 as the pandemic continues to disrupt business, travel and manufacturing around the world. Continue reading.

Trump may come to regret his big celebration of a small dip in unemployment

AlterNet logoThough the unemployment rate remains in the double-digits, the official unemployment numbers are slightly lower than economists expected, prompting self-congratulations by President Donald Trump.

But experts say celebration is premature.

Indeed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate fell from 14.7 percent in April to 13.3 percent in May as the economy added 2.5 million jobs. The high April number was the worst that the American workforce had seen since monthly record-keeping began in 1948, and almost certainly the worst since the Great Depression. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett predicted last month that unemployment would rise above 20 percent, a view that was widely shared by economists. Continue reading.

Paul Krugman: A stronger GDP won’t help Americans if they’re dead

AlterNet logoLiberal economist Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column, has been stressing that the better a job the United States does with social distancing policies now, the better off the U.S. economy will be in the long run. In his Thursday column, Krugman warns that a premature reopening could hurt the U.S. both economically and from a health standpoint.

“America is now engaged in a vast, dangerous experiment,” Krugman writes. “Although social distancing has limited the spread of the coronavirus, it is far from contained. Yet despite warnings from epidemiologists, much of the country is moving to open up for business as usual.”

President Donald Trump and his allies, Krugman notes, have been asserting that a speedy reopening is necessary in order to “save the economy.” But Krugman emphasizes that a strong GDP isn’t going to help Americans who die needlessly. Continue reading.