San José, CA – Earlier in the day, I glanced at oil prices and saw that they were down 40% for the day at about $10 a barrel. Pretty bad, I thought. Then after financial markets closed, I got a call about it. I looked and saw that the closing price was negative $37.63 and let out an f-bomb, the first of about a half a dozen in my three minute conversation.

Unemployment rate heading to 20% in April

San José, CA – On Thursday, April 16, the U.S. Department of Labor released their latest report on new claims for unemployment insurance, or UI, benefits showing 5.2 million more people applied. This means that more than 22 million people have lost their livelihood in the last four weeks. The number of people actually collecting unemployment insurance benefits soared to 12 million, the highest ever.

Early reports on April even worse

San José, CA – On Wednesday, April 15 the U.S. Commerce Department reported that retail sales of household goods fell 8.7% in March, the largest drop since the report began in 1992. This was twice as bad as the worst month during the last financial crisis and will probably be worse in the report on April sales as many stores did not shut until late in March.

San José, CA – The COVID-19 pandemic that is sweeping through the United States, with over 600,000 confirmed infections and almost 25,000 deaths as of April 14, is hitting African Americans the hardest. While complete data has not been released by the federal government – just one of a long list of failures – early and partial data shows that nationwide, African Americans are dying at twice the rate of other Americans from COVID-19.

Unemployed line up for miles at food banks and millions skip paying rent

San José, CA – For the second week in a row, the U.S. Department of Labor reported April 9 that more than 6 million people applied for unemployment insurance in the previous week. The Labor Department also revised up last week’s claim numbers to 6.6 million, meaning that a total of 16.8 million people have lost their jobs and applied for UI benefits in just the last three weeks. The actual number could be higher as many states’ websites, phone lines and paper application sites were swamped.

San José, CA – Much of the day-to-day news coverage on the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has been on the plight of New York City, which has been the hardest hit to date. With more than 8 million people, NYC is the largest city in the United States, but the number of COVID-19 infections, at more than 63,000, is more than any other entire country in the world except for the United States, Spain, Italy, Germany, France and China. The death toll of more than 2500 is more than every other country in the world except for Italy, Spain, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Iran and China.

_Unemployment rate jumps in April _

San José, CA – The headline news that the unemployment rate for March jumped by almost a full percentage point, to 4.4%, was bad enough. The actual unemployment rate was much higher by the end of March, given that the more 10 million people who lost their jobs and filed for unemployment insurance benefits in the last two weeks of March were not counted. Adding in these workers would have increased the unemployment rate by more than 6%, raising the total rate at the end of March to about 10.5%.

Businesses slash 700,000 jobs in the first half of March

San José, CA – On Friday, April 3, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that businesses cut more than 700,000 jobs last month. This report was based on surveys from the first half of March, before the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic hit. This ended the longest streak of job gains – almost nine and a half years – and almost certainly marked the beginning of a recession.

A new record of 6.6 million Americans apply for benefits

San José, CA – New claims for Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits doubled from record numbers just a week earlier. On Thursday, April 2, the Department of Labor reported that more than 6.6 million people applied for state unemployment insurance benefits for the week ending March 28. This means that almost 10 MILLION people lost their jobs and applied for UI benefits in just the last two weeks of March. This economic crisis has caused more job losses in two weeks than the entire 2007 to 2009 recession, where 8 million jobs were lost.

San José, CA – Many immigrants won’t be able to get help from the bipartisan COVID-19 pandemic aid bills passed by Congress and signed by President Trump. More than 4 million undocumented immigrants who are paying taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, will not qualify for the $1200 per person benefit because they have no Social Security number. Another 5 million American citizen children with undocumented parents also will not get the $500 per child benefit.