Restore the $600 per week unemployment supplement!

San José, CA – On February 13, the Northern California Unemployed Committee (NCUC) held its first protest in San José. The protest was called for the day after the IRS began accepting 2020 tax returns, to demand that the federal government stop taxing benefits for the unemployed. The protest also called for the restoration of the $600 weekly unemployment supplement.

San José, CA – During the week ending February 6, almost 800,000 (793,000) people filed for new claims for regular state unemployment insurance. More than 330,000 others applied for the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance or PUA that covers the self-employed and gig workers. This comes to a total of more than 1.1 million people who have lost their jobs in the past week.

San José, CA – On Friday, February 5 the U.S. Department of Labor released their monthly jobs report showing a very small gain of 49,000 net new jobs. This was only half of what economists had predicted, and the job loss in December was revised up by 87,000, so there were still 178,000 fewer jobs in January than in November.

Gross Domestic Product weaker than expected

San José, CA – The broadest measure of unemployment insurance, which includes the regular state unemployment insurance or UI, the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance or PUA, the federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation or PEUC, as well as the state Extended Benefits or EB rose in the first week of January by 2.3 million people to a total of 18.3 million people. While down from its peak in April, it is still nine times as high as it was a year ago before the recession began, according to the weekly report by the U.S. Department of Labor released on Thursday, January 28.

Chicago, IL – The past few days have seen GameStop and Reddit become the meme-of-the-week and take significant headlines. Some media outlets are saying the recent turn of events “isn’t funny; it’s stupid” while celebrity billionaires like Elon Musk crack jokes on Twitter. Redditors are claiming that they are crashing Wall Street, and yet the market is bullish as ever. What should we be taking from all of this? In short, we must seize this moment to educate about how the stock market works, who it works for, and how we can institute true changes that benefit everyday people.

Retail sales fall for third month in row

San José, CA – The U.S. economy showed more signs of weakness as the COVID-19 pandemic rages and Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine rollout crashes and burns amid finger-pointing, lies and incompetence. New claims for regular state unemployment rose by more than 20% in the week ending January 9, the biggest gain since the dark days of March when the economy hit a brick wall.

San José, CA – on Friday, January 8 the U.S. Department of Labor released its monthly report on the state of the job market. While mainstream economists expected economic growth to continue to slow with only 50,000 new jobs, down from a gain of 330,000 jobs in November, the reality was much worse. In December, 140,000 jobs were lost, the first month of losses since the dark days of April. The year ended with 9.8 million fewer jobs than before the recession began, a record high going back to 1939, and almost twice as bad as the previous recession year of 2009. President Trump became the first president since Republican Herbert Hoover set to leave office with a net job loss.