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.

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.

_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.

Federal Reserve takes extreme measures to protect wealthy

San José, CA – Last week the financial news was dominated by the falling stock market, which had its worst week since the 2008 financial crisis. But behind the scenes the U.S. Federal Reserve, or Fed, was working feverishly to prevent another financial crisis, taking actions not even done during the 2008 crash.

Tidal wave of layoffs growing

San José, CA – On Thursday, March 19, the Department of Labor reported a surge of applications for Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits as the COVID-19 pandemic began to bite into the economy. For the week ending March 14, a seasonally adjusted 281,000 claims were filed, up 70,000 (or one-third) from the week before and much greater than the predicted 220,000. A National Public Radio poll also conducted last week showed that 18% of all households had already lost income from layoffs or reduced work hours.

San José, CA – The fall in stock prices gained speed on Wall Street on Monday, March 16. By the closing bell, U.S. stocks had the largest drop since the crash in October 1987, with prices down almost 13%. The headline Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3000 points to end just above 20,000, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ fell almost 1000 points. A circuit breaker kicked in within minutes of the market opening as the broad S&P 500 fell 7%. This led to a short-lived attempt to bounce back but in the end, stocks were just short of another trading halt at 13% down.

Stock market futures trading halted after 5% drop

San José, CA – On Sunday, March 15, the Federal Reserve bank hit the panic button, dropping interest rates by a full percentage point to near zero. The last time that Fed did this was in December 2008 during the financial crisis. The Federal Reserve also pledged to restart the Quantitative Easing or QE program of longer-term bond buying, first started in November 2008. Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin also vowed to go to congress this coming week to restart emergency financial powers for the federal government in addition to the Fed’s actions.