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JOBLESS CLAIMS: Because the seasonal adjustment factors are below 100 from the beginning of February to the end of June, I have been tracking raw jobless claims data instead of the headline seasonally adjusted figures /1
So, I calculate the total number of initial jobless claims in the US since March 14th to be 33.4 million /2
As non-farm payrolls were just over 150 million in the US before the Covid-19 crisis hit, that's over 20% of employment already. And that doesn't include anyone who has not filed for unemployment insurance /3
Given that initial jobless claims are running at a pace of over 2 1/2 million per week, it's reasonable to expect the US peak unemployment level to hit a Great Depression-like level of 25%, just as Goldman Sachs is predicting /4 https://twitter.com/edwardnh/status/1260727377996496898?s=20
MY VIEW: The employment drop in the US is an order of magnitude larger than any other major economy I have seen. And that owes, not to the lockdown per se, it owes to the US economic model. This will have negative consequences regarding long-term unemployment and bankruptcy /5
Even with continued large deficit spending by the federal government, the longer-term economic outlook in the US is not good. For me, this chart by @calculatedrisk keeps coming to mind. /6
There's no V-shaped recovery coming, folks. That's fantasyland stuff. With the right economic policy, we can mitigate some pretty bad stuff. But, it's going to be a tough slog however you look at it /end
