America will need much more stimulus.
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Some things are intensely awful no matter how much you prepare for them, such as jumping into icy water or listening to Nickelback. Today’s jobs report was like that.
Unemployment soared to 14.7% in April, the highest rate since the Great Depression. A record 20.5 million people lost their jobs, making all the employment growth of a decade-long expansion go *poof* in a month. We’d seen this coming; weekly unemployment claims have shown 33.5 million people losing jobs in seven weeks. Wall Street expected worse, in fact, and is already looking ahead to some imaginary recovery (or new Fed rescue operation, as Mohamed-El-Erian writes), so stocks naturally soared, which should at least keep makers of pitchforks and guillotines employed.
But the numbers are still unspeakably awful and will keep getting worse; the report’s survey period was in mid-April and didn’t catch nearly all the misery. Most of the job losses are temporary for now, but that can’t last much longer. What’s clear is that the trillions of dollars Congress and President Donald Trump and the Fed have poured into the economy so far won’t nearly be enough, Bloomberg’s editorial board writes. Many of these programs expire in early summer, when we’ll likely still be suffering depression-level economic pain.
Weirdly, neither Congress nor the president seems all that energized about loading another round into the Stimulus Cannon, notes Jonathan Bernstein. Trump’s approach to the economic disaster, and the coronavirus pandemic that started it, lately seems based on the assumption that ignoring a problem will make it magically go away. This is highly relatable, but no way to run a country.
Trump’s answer for now is rushing to reopen states from pandemic shutdowns that clearly aren’t ready. This does have the benefit of saving some states a few bucks on unemployment payments, notes Noah Smith. Some have threatened workers they’ll lose benefits if they don’t return to dangerous jobs, in fact. But this won’t help the economy and could even make things much worse by stretching out the pandemic, the lockdowns and the job losses.
