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3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

wsj.com

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Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#171

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #160
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the next couple of weeks are going to be eye opening - we're going to get a lot of reports of deaths, even of the young and healthy, which we're already seeing. That should steel the collective resolve to last a while here. People are talking of lifting the restrictions and our collective endurance and things have barely gotten going. It's really complaining about the length of the red light when it's just tu…

> Naturally people aren't going hole up for a year, but we have to stop acting antsy when we've been in our houses a week or two. It's natural to be antsy if you've lost your job, have no social safety net, and can't pay for food or your rent. Either pay them to stay home, or don't be surprised when they leave to attempt to make a living to survive. They're already at risk of being homeless and destitute, so COVID ma…

I agree. Let's pay people so that everyone can do the right thing in this time of crises.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#172

Post by alexpetralia »

luma wrote: post #88
stupandaus wrote: post #24

A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] 4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment s…

Further, unemployment benefits are managed by the states, and those states are running web services which typically see a few hundred hits a day. They are now trying to process tens of thousands of new records each day, and at least in MI the service is absolutely not up to the task. My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully f…

I confirmed that the state's unemployment website has slowed to a crawl (if it is working at all).

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#173

Post by ss2003 »

big_chungus wrote: post #126
Slartie wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you expect to "motivate" people to just go to work, spend money in restaurants, fly around, take cruises...as if there was nothing going on, while at the same time millions of people are dying? Everyone is going to have someone in their family who dies because of this virus. And they're not going to die silently - you'll have crazy imagery of emergency rooms spilling over with patients circulating among the pu…

The worst-case projection is 1.7 million: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/us/coronavirus-deaths-est... . If the media hadn't spent weeks fearmongering and spinning this as some killer exotic plague (rather than something that hits at-risk populations much harder but is survivable for most others). Only a few percent of younger people have needed intensive care. It won't make too much of a difference anyway; we'll…

We should be cutting the bloated military budget not entitlements.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#174

Post by [deleted] »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #171
toomuchtodo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Naturally people aren't going hole up for a year, but we have to stop acting antsy when we've been in our houses a week or two. It's natural to be antsy if you've lost your job, have no social safety net, and can't pay for food or your rent. Either pay them to stay home, or don't be surprised when they leave to attempt to make a living to survive. They're already at risk of being homeless and destitute, so COVID ma…

I agree. Let's pay people so that everyone can do the right thing in this time of crises.

[deleted]

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#176

Post by bluedino »

alharith wrote: post #82
duxup wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference. Yeah I've been doing a fair amount of takeout and places where you had dozens of people ... operating with two or three people now.

My brother is a restaurant owner and reports that despite volume being down, profit is up due to less overhead. Others in the restaurant industry are reporting the same. When we come out on the other side of this, I think a lot of businesses are going to rethink a lot of things they held on to as infallible truths. Sorry as many mentioned, yes the key ingredient is takeout: This is a fast casual italian / pizza resta…

They might be making more money on sales vs staff right now but anyone who has a rent payment isn't going to cover it with takeout alone.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#177

Post by Demiurge »

luma wrote: post #88
stupandaus wrote: post #24

A few things to note: 1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse. 2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce. 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1] 4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment s…

Further, unemployment benefits are managed by the states, and those states are running web services which typically see a few hundred hits a day. They are now trying to process tens of thousands of new records each day, and at least in MI the service is absolutely not up to the task. My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully f…

As a developer I immediately though of the power of queues. Twenty people trying to submit same form does not work for everyone, but a queue processing one person at a time might allow the twenty people to submit within a short time. It is flattening the curve! If I was contracted to fix this ASAP, I would set up an nginx front-end proxy config that doesn't allow more than X sessions and suggest a time in the future when they could try again.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#178

Post by rubber_duck »

_y5hn wrote: post #105
rubber_duck wrote: post #35

And this is just the start. While I think the US response to Corona was slower than the response in my country I feel the US is the only country that's seriously discussing economic repercussions and debating the medical experts. In EU (at least in my country) it's doctors running things and we are in "stop the pandemic at all cost". Everyone is in panic due to Italy situation. But doctors are only trained to see the…

Each country has economic and market mitigations. Some are beginning to copy US model of Gov paying bills outright for a period. If everyone can do this with low cost, there's no reason for high risk and damage to economy later. This incident will make us learn fast. The medical experts do consider economic and market impacts, and there are alignments in governments how to balance everything. However, since this is a…

I'm not saying countries are not implementing economic mitigations - I'm saying the only voices in decision making are coming from medical experts - there is no public evaluation or discussion of economic impact as a counterpoint to any action suggested by epidemiologists and doctors. The economy minister here is just putting out fires - he has zero say in the measures taken.

And the politicians in charge are too afraid to debate the experts and frankly lack any leadership at all in this situation - (with a few exceptions in other countries). Blindly listening to experts of one domain because you are afraid is not leadership, they are supposed to do balancing decisions - and from what I see in the media they basically delegated the government responsibilities - if they are discussing this they are certainly not making their discussions or reasoning public.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#179

Post by minikites »

big_chungus wrote: post #167
csomar wrote: post #146

> A week ago, he said he had “a good middle-class job” which paid him $35.50 an hour plus health care and retirement benefits. Now he is struggling to figure out how he’ll pay a $300 electric bill and $1,000 in rent for his townhouse. He also lost his health insurance. You make $35.5/hour in (I suppose?) a stable job but if the work stops for a week, you struggle with a $300 bill? I know some people are living payche…

This is exactly right. The economy has grown to unsustainable levels based on the economic habits of the average American who can't be bothered to save, hence the crash we're seeing now. At sixty hours a week, that guy should be making six figures, pre-tax. There is zero excuse for not saving. Everyone should save at least six months of salary for emergencies; though a few people legitimately can't, most Americans si…

Wages have stagnated since the 1970s: https://i.stack.imgur.com/m7EXP.jpg

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#180

Post by Jupe »

alharith wrote: post #82
duxup wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference. Yeah I've been doing a fair amount of takeout and places where you had dozens of people ... operating with two or three people now.

My brother is a restaurant owner and reports that despite volume being down, profit is up due to less overhead. Others in the restaurant industry are reporting the same. When we come out on the other side of this, I think a lot of businesses are going to rethink a lot of things they held on to as infallible truths. Sorry as many mentioned, yes the key ingredient is takeout: This is a fast casual italian / pizza resta…

Of course there's less overhead, they are employing fewer people (or drastically reducing paid hours for employees). That's kind of the point of the parent article.
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