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This chart really puts it in context. About 10x as much as the last recession. Additionally there are plenty of people who haven’t been able to apply yet, plenty more who are still hanging on to jobs.
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Comparing month on month losses is not that helpful as the pace is so different. The GFC caused approximately 9 million jobs to be lost in the US so these two weeks are not quite equal to that.
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It’s still early but the big difference this time around is people are not going outside and spending money. Last time you’d still see people going out to restaurants, using taxis, going cinemas, even going on holidays etc etc. Think it will get worse.
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Ah sorry poor maths these two weeks are actually worse than the GFC job losses.
Don’t ever celebrate if you make a lot of money.
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@saf is exactly right. The size and scale of increase in unemployment figures is reflective of two things; 1. the obvious: the abrupt and sweeping suspension of economic activity either through government mandated advice and/or the collapse in consumer confidence, and more importantly, 2. The ‘flexible’ nature of US employment law that enables rapid firing and hiring of employees. Which means on the other side we could expect a relatively fast reduction in jobless figures - notwithstanding the fact that many business may not be around to see it through to recovery.
A couple if questions to consider: First, when things do start coming back online, which companies will be constrained in their ability to deliver and meet the expected pent up demand? This is the secondary supply side shock that may turn a disastrous situation catastrophic.
Second, GFC saw a number of structural changes to employment and the real economy - will we see the same here?
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The thing that confuses me the most is that s&p 500 is up 2% on the announcement of it! How?
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Check the news. It’s 
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“One area I would warn people about for example is the virus stocks,” Chanos said on Thursday on CNBC’s Halftime Report. They are “doing well right now in this enforced lockdown. A lot of these companies are really not structurally growth stocks that are trading at 30, 40, 50 times earnings because they are going to do well in the first and second quarters of 2020.”
The founder of Kynikos Associates listed Zoom Video, Teladoc and Clorox as companies getting a lift from the stay-at-home trend amid the coronavirus pandemic. Shares of Zoom Video and Teladoc soared 85% and 94% this year respectively on a surge in demand, while Clorox gained more than 15%.
“Of course when the virus subsides, and we all know it will, those companies will probably begin to not look as attractive going forward,” Chanos said. “I would tell your viewers to be very, very careful about just piling into things that are doing well because people are inside and will stay inside for the next three, four, five weeks.”
These companies are acting “contracyclical” due to the implementation and persistence of social distancing practices, Chanos said. The short seller added he’s not betting against Zoom Video or Teladoc.
“Look at the business and look at 2019. Take an educated guess, do your research and do your work and what you think this looks like in 2021. If it’s still a cheap stock then, then it might be an attractive investment on the long side,” Chanos said.
“You have to write off 2020 and I think the market is and will ultimately,” Chanos said.
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I sold my Zoom because I felt the same way about the pop from the virus
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Make your own masks:
FT on UK unemployment:
Official figures showing that 950,000 people have applied for the government’s universal credit benefit since the UK’s lockdown began on March 16 confirm the extent of financial hardship people are feeling as a result of the measures taken to combat the virus.
The surge in claims suggests that despite the support promised by government for workers furloughed by their employers and for the self-employed, the UK is suffering job losses on a scale and speed unprecedented even in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
“I suspect more is to come,” said Paul Dales, at the consultancy Capital Economics. He argued that many businesses would try to hold on to staff but find themselves unable to balance the books, or potentially ineligible for the government’s job retention scheme.
Not all of those applying for UC will have lost their jobs: many may be still working, but on lower pay, or applying for other welfare measures such as child tax credit or housing benefit.
But Mr Dales said that if the current rate of new claims continued for a further two weeks, based on past patterns it could translate into a rise of around 450,000 people drawing unemployment benefits by mid-April.
This would take Britain’s unemployment rate from 3.9 per cent before the Covid-19 outbreak to 5.2 per cent in April — reversing all the improvement seen over the past three years within just two months.
The Department for Work and Pensions has moved more than 10,000 staff to help process claims and call back those unable to get through the long queues on the UC helpline; it says staff are working flat out and that the system is “standing up well” given the pressures.
However, it was unable to say how many of the 950,000 registered claims had been processed or had even passed identity verification checks. Weekly data published by the Cabinet Office suggests that only a small proportion have succeeded in verifying their identity through the online process.
Charities that help claimants navigate the system say two issues — problems with the system for online identity checks and the need to arrange an appointment by phone after registering a claim — lie behind the very long waits to reach the UC helpline.
Although surveys suggest that around half of companies are planning to use the government’s new job retention scheme — paying 80 per cent of wages for furloughed workers — there also appear to be many that are unwilling or unable to wait for the money to come on tap, which the government has said will be late April at the earliest.
“Some companies are either tight already and that wait is too long for them, or they are not 100 per cent sure they will get the money,” said Yael Selfin, economist at KPMG, adding that many businesses were desperate for information on how the scheme would work and found it unhelpful that it could not be used when putting workers on reduced hours.
The Office for National Statistics said on Thursday that more than a quarter of businesses surveyed were cutting staff levels in the short term and a separate survey published this week by the CIPD organisation for HR professionals showed that a similar proportion expected to make permanent redundancies.
If the government fails to convince employers to use the new scheme, unemployment could rapidly reach levels seen after the 2008 crisis, when the jobless rate peaked at 8.4 per cent.
This will mean acute hardship for workers forced to fall back on UC, rather than receiving the much more generous wage subsidy. It could also mean that companies are unable to pick up production as quickly as they otherwise would once the lockdown eases.
However, some economists argue that the UK labour market could recover from this shock more quickly than in previous recessions owing to its strong starting point and because many businesses would want to hire instantly once they were allowed to operate.
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FT:
Reuters:
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The household survey, which asks individual residents how many people are working there, showed a stunning drop of 2,987,000 workers for the month.
That compares to the 701,000 nonfarm payrolls decline reported in the establishment survey and gives another perspective to just how bad the situation has gotten since the economy has all but shut down to protect against the coronavirus spread.
When releasing its headline nonfarm payrolll numbers, the government focuses on the establishment survey as it captures a larger sample size and is considered less volatile than the household count. The establishment survey captures about 145,000 businesses and work sites, while its counterpart focuses on 60,000 eligible households and includes agricultural workers.
Both use the week up to the 12th of the month for sampling, which in this case was before the worst of the job losses began.
The Labor Department uses the household survey to calculate the headline unemployment rate, which jumped from 3.5% to 4.4%.
In the March survey, the household survey’s numbers are stunning.
They show a decline of employment from 158,759,000 in February to 155,772,000 in March. That came amid a drop of 1.6 million in the civilian labor force and a 1.1 percentage point tumble in the employment-population ratio to 60%. The labor force participation rate contracted 0.7 percentage points to 62.7%. Those counted as not in the labor force rose nearly 1.8 million to 96.8 million.
Other numbers showed a 1.2 million increase in job losers or those who completed temporary jobs. Those unemployed for less than five weeks surged by 1.5 million while those at work part-time for economic reasons jumped by more than 1.4 million.
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United Kingdom: Retail and recreation trips slumped 85%, grocery and pharmacy visits dropped 46%, and workplace trips fell 55%.
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Not saying I agree but for the sake of balance