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3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

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

#481

Post by vkou »

commandlinefan wrote: post #339
scottLobster wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this was your intent, but "sacrificing millions for the sake of the Market" sounds like you're trying to shift away from the point that right now about 3.28 million more folks (probably more) are wondering how to pay their rent/mortgages and feed their children. If this lockdown continues indefinitely the death numbers from the economic fallout will likely eclipse those of the pandemic. But nah, the "mark…

Yeah I don't see that the tradeoff is "letting coronavirus kill millions of people vs. Jeff Bezos losing 2% of his income" so much as "letting coronavirus kill millions of people vs. letting millions of people die of starvation". We're not there yet, but lets see where we are in a month.

Is there going to be some shortage of food that I'm not aware of?

Or just a shortage in distribution mechanisms for it, because we are unwilling to consider emergency measures during an emergency?

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

#482

Post by MattSayar »

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…

Wow, just found what my state (CO) is doing to help manage the influx. Talk about a low-tech workaround.

>IMPORTANT NOTICE: Because of the high volume of claims, we are asking that you help us help you and our greater community.

>If you need to file an unemployment claim and your last name begins with the letter A - M, file a claim on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, or after 12 noon on Saturday.

>If you need to file an unemployment claim and your last name begins with the letter N - Z, file a claim on Monday, Wednesday, Friday or before 12 noon on Saturday.

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

#483

Post by throwawayjava »

ithinkinstereo wrote: post #289
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…

I went to my local 7-11 a couple of weeks ago to get some cash at the ATM. Next to it was a garbage bin for throwing away your receipt. Out of curiosity, I went through about a dozen and not a single one had a balance above $1,000. Most were below $500. There is little financial literacy in this country. Basic lessons about opening a bank account, the difference between checkings and savings, etc. is not something th…

This comment is a tad ironic. My monthly expenses are $N, and I keep at most $N + 1,000 in my checking account. Often much less e.g during the first half of the month. I keep my checking account balance as low as possible precisely because I know "the difference between checkings and [high-yield] savings". Keeping more than a small buffer extra in your checking account seems pretty financially illiterate to me.

Also, keeping anything more than absolutely necessary in a checking account is ridiculously dangerous if you're using ATMs outside gas stations....

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

#484

Post by alasdair_ »

judge2020 wrote: post #239
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put the web form (plain static assets JS/CSS/HTML) on a globally accessible CDN. Then use SQS intake for each unemployment application form. Then firehouse it out, wherever it needs to go, at a rate which you can realistically deal with it. Queuing access to the form itself and telling someone to wake up at 4:52 AM so they can then merely access the static assets is a less-than-desirable user experience.

Even typeform/Google Forms would be better suited for the task.

>Even typeform/Google Forms would be better suited for the task.

And now you've given a private company access to market-moving unemployment data. And a million other issues, especially legal ones.

The technology part in and of itself isn't that difficult, it's all of the constraints (and, often, mountains of laws) that are the bigger issue.

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

#485

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

rixrax wrote: post #477
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…

And yet DJIA is up almost 1000 points. Is this the stimulus $$$ in work, or what is going on here?

Markets are complicated. Especially in the short term, you have large forces that aren't concerned only with future expected value.

For instance, if you manage a fund that sold substantially on the way down, you now have a great deal of cash you need to do something with. Considering a 'local bottom' has been found, you may be very interested in trying to re-enter the market now. The risk of waiting for a lower entry begins to compete heavily with the risk of missing a buying opportunity.

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

#486

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

chadmeister wrote: post #335
mtberatwork wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to be optimistic and think we all learn valuable lessons from this but realistically most people will just double-down in their convictions and blame some other externality as to why their own political/economic ideologies didn't pan out.

Looking like you are right about this. Approval ratings are up somehow: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

Time will tell whether it's a crisis bump or a sustained trend.

I wouldn't give it much weight for now.

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

#487

Post by josephorjoe »

MattSayar wrote: post #482
luma wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow, just found what my state (CO) is doing to help manage the influx. Talk about a low-tech workaround. >IMPORTANT NOTICE: Because of the high volume of claims, we are asking that you help us help you and our greater community. >If you need to file an unemployment claim and your last name begins with the letter A - M, file a claim on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, or after 12 noon on Saturday. >If you need to file an un…

Ooooh, like gas rationing in the 70s.

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

#488

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

devonkim wrote: post #476
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you applying for the 44k/yr job to fix it? No, most of are not.

Eh, USDS and 18F jobs are kind of contract-based and do hit past six figures last I saw. However, they were defunded a lot since last I saw by POTUS45 so it's not clear what the state of comp is. DC area tech is a mish mash of rather enterprise-centric businesses and can be challenging if you're in the wrong domains of expertise.

Unemployment services are ran by the state. The entry level Software Engineer salary by the state of California is around $64k, with senior level salaries between about $75-$105k in Sacramento. I do not know if if this is normal, above average, or below average when compared with other states.

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

#489

Post by abnercoimbre »

ithinkinstereo wrote: post #289
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…

I went to my local 7-11 a couple of weeks ago to get some cash at the ATM. Next to it was a garbage bin for throwing away your receipt. Out of curiosity, I went through about a dozen and not a single one had a balance above $1,000. Most were below $500. There is little financial literacy in this country. Basic lessons about opening a bank account, the difference between checkings and savings, etc. is not something th…

There's plenty of people with multiple bank accounts, one of which just has a few hundred bucks in checking, and then near the end of a month they pull from an online savings (that has higher APY) into their main account as required. That's just one example of many tricks employed.

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

#490

Post by aianus »

HappySweeney wrote: post #256
scottLobster wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this was your intent, but "sacrificing millions for the sake of the Market" sounds like you're trying to shift away from the point that right now about 3.28 million more folks (probably more) are wondering how to pay their rent/mortgages and feed their children. If this lockdown continues indefinitely the death numbers from the economic fallout will likely eclipse those of the pandemic. But nah, the "mark…

> If this lockdown continues indefinitely the death numbers from the economic fallout will likely eclipse those of the pandemic. Seeing that doing nothing will likely lead to lead to millions of deaths, how would the lockdown possibly kill more than that? Are you under the impression people will just willingly starve to death, or that fighting over food will get so bad that millions of people will die?

> Seeing that doing nothing will likely lead to lead to millions of deaths, how would the lockdown possibly kill more than that?

The lockdown is wasting months to years of billions of people's lives. That has to be equivalent to some number of deaths, hard to quantify how many, but it's greater than zero.

Also, a bad economy literally kills people by starvation albeit in foreign, poor countries that don't have food surpluses or the ability to print USD.

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