The rise in unemployment has hit African Americans the hardest, as their unemployment rate has soared from 6.2% in January to 8.3% last month, climbing by more than a third this year. In contrast, the unemployment rate for white Americans has gone up too, but only 3.5% in January to 3.9% in November, an increase of a bit more than 10%. So the ratio of Black to white unemployment has gone from 1.77 in January to 2.13 in November. This is in part a reflection of the long history of Black Americans being “last hired, first fired” and in part the racist policies of the Trump administration, in particular the big cuts in federal government workforce, which disproportionately hits Black workers.

The October and November reports on net new jobs saw a loss of 105,000 in October, mainly from federal workers who took buyouts from the DOGE cuts six months earlier.

In the last six months, three have seen job losses, while three showed gains. During this time there was a net gain of just 100,000 jobs, or an average of 17,000 per month.

The actual numbers might be worse, as the annual adjustments have been to lower the job creation by about 50,000 jobs a month. If this holds true for the adjustment, or benchmarking, for 2025, the economy would have been losing jobs for the last six months at an average monthly rate of 33,000 per month.

Despite Trump’s goal of “reshoring” manufacturing to the United States through higher tariffs, in fact manufacturing companies have shed jobs every month since Trump proclaimed “liberation day” when he announced higher tariffs on almost every country in the world in April. One problem is that Trump has also tariffed many inputs like steel and aluminum that are needed for manufacturing, making production more expensive in the United States, offsetting the tariffs on imports of finished goods.

While Trump has said that high tariffs under the McKinley administration (1897-1901), during the time of U.S. industrialization, he forgets that it was immigrants, not native-born Americans, who filled the factories at the turn of the century. Trump has not only stopped immigrants and refugees at the U.S./Mexican border, he has terrorized communities with deportation raids, and is limiting legal immigrants and refugees.

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On October 15, a White House memo boasted a $13 billion investment in five Midwestern plants by automaker Stellantis. It also announced projects by Whirlpool, General Electric and others. Thanks to tariffs, Trump tells us, the prodigal sons of industry have returned.

But how does the scoreboard really add up for reindustrialization?

Not quite as advertised. These aren’t new factories; they’re old ones being retooled. Tariffs shoot manufacturers in the foot, since they drive up prices for supplies. Investing in new technologies takes skilled workers. This is a hard sell when ICE just deported over 300 Korean technicians from a Georgia car factory. Auto corporations, hearts full of liberal compassion, fear that “first they came for Hyundai.”

That said, there is a real attempt by both parties to “bring manufacturing back.” The truth is, this isn’t the same thing as creating jobs.

Putting America back to work?

The latest factories will be more automated than those of the past. For example, the Wall Street Journal reports that Hyundai’s latest auto plant in Georgia has a robot-to-human ratio of 2 to 1, compared to the 7 to 1 industry average. A study by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 23% of employment in direct production is mostly automated. While Trump promised booms in employment, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a loss of 12,000 manufacturing jobs in August alone. The Bureau predicts continued stagnation through 2034.

This trend is not new. In 1980, it took over ten hours’ labor to produce a ton of steel, and by 2018 this dropped to 90 minutes. Production levels have stayed constant, but the number of manufacturing workers has declined since 1979.

Automation not only reduces the number of jobs, it demands greater levels of education for the jobs it opens. Programming, overseeing, operating and repairing equipment often requires either college-level education or specialized training. Workers late in their careers, rural workers, or otherwise poor job-seekers are going to have a hard time accessing these skills.

Economist Robert Lawrence summarizes, “the sector should not be promoted as a vehicle of inclusive growth and employment for low-skilled workers.”

Falling rate of profit

Automation has sharpened the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. In order to undercut each other, manufacturers race to adopt the latest technologies. However, by doing so, they’re permanently raising the bar for machinery used throughout the industry (i.e. think the robot-to-human ratio discussed earlier). That means that a greater portion of their costs are constant. It’s impossible to squeeze an extra dollar out of a machine like it’s possible to exploit a human worker. The overall rates of profit can go down.

This can be seen in General Motors’ average annual operating margin, which went from 8.7% in the 1960s to negative numbers in the 2000s. Since 2008, car companies have been able to buck this trend to some extent. But this is the exception that confirms the rule: they needed help from Obama’s bailout and Biden’s subsidies. They’ve also slashed wages and relocated U.S. plants to union-busting states in the South. The 2023 strikers in the United Auto Workers know this all too well. But even in the past few years, automakers have seen their profit margins dip once again.

The race to the bottom is self-defeating. Low rates of profit make it harder to attract the finances needed to stay on the cutting edge.

Julius Krein, head of the New American Industrial Alliance, criticizes fellow capitalists for the big green dollar signs in their eyes. “During the last several decades, Americans found a way to financially engineer seemingly everything except for investments in critical techno-industrial capabilities,” he writes.

“Warning indicators are flashing red”

Because of this stagnation, more of the U.S. ruling class is ready for a heavier government hand. The prize at stake isn’t the average worker, it’s the average bottom line.

Oren Kass, chief economist at a conservative think tank, writes in Foreign Affairs: “Across the American economic dashboard, warning indicators are flashing red. The globalization and financialization of the past several decades have slowed investment, innovation, and growth. Industrial output and productivity have declined, and the United States has lost its leadership position in vital technologies – including in aerospace, energy, and semiconductors.”

It’s not just that lights are blinking on the dash, it’s also that capitalists won’t pay for a new car. “Simply put, the activities that generate the highest returns on capital are not the ones that have anything to do with building productive and innovative enterprises.”

Their solution is for the government to support gains that capital can’t achieve in the marketplace. Tariffs are one step of many. These are starting to compel manufacturers to invest in the U.S., which in turn forces companies to automate to avoid paying more workers. Industry representatives are also begging for subsidies and state-funded retraining programs. “Lead us,” the blind ask of the blind.

Salvaging jobs, or empire?

Attempts at reindustrialization have nothing to do with jobs and more to do with recovering profits. But above all else, it’s U.S. imperialism’s scramble against foreign competition.

Within U.S. borders, European and Asian automakers assemble more vehicles than the Detroit Three (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler/Stellantis). Julius Krein complains that the U.S. is in the “middle of the pack” for overall automation levels.

China is leading the pack. The ruling class has come to admit the country’s economic superiority. “China has achieved advanced electrification with astonishing speed in part because of government support,” a recent Foreign Affairs article noted. “If the United States wants to achieve results like China, it will have to build more like China by replicating certain aspects of how Beijing organizes and mobilizes its production economy.”

In the same pages, former US Deputy National Security Adviser Nadia Schadlow recommends: “A commitment to reindustrialization would undercut China’s efforts to weaken the United States.”

The motivation behind attempted reindustrialization is clear – the U.S. monopoly capitalists face an existential threat from socialist China. And they can’t foot the bill to pull ahead. They are right to be worried. Modern manufacturing is central for everything from cars to drones to artificial intelligence. As much as Trump wants to sell the idea of some untapped potential for jobs, he won’t revive the factories of the 1950s. He’s desperate to shore up imperialism by milking what he can out of a declining industrial base.

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The disappointment was caused by the report that the economy only created 73,000 net new jobs in July. This was a much lower number than expected by economists and meant that the economy created the fewest jobs over the past year since March of 2021, when the economy was just starting to shake off a recession. There was also disappointment that the unemployment rate for African Americans and for Asian Americans increased by 0.4%, or four times as much as the unemployment rate for white Americans.

Many were also shocked by the very large downward revision in new job creation in May and June. While the original reports said that 144,000 and 147,000 net new jobs were created, the revisions brought the numbers down to only 19,000 in May and 14,000 in June. This raises the possibility a similar revision would that the economy actually lost jobs in July, which is a traditional way to mark the start of a recession in the United States.

Last but not least, President Trump was angry about the report. He claimed that he would bring prices down, but in fact they have been rising at a faster rate. Trump also said that his tax cuts and tariffs would grow manufacturing, but now the economy has shed manufacturing jobs for three months in a row. So, he shot the messenger by firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which prepares the monthly report. This will cause even more doubt about whether the statistics in the future reflect the best estimate of reality or what best serves the interests of President Trump.

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The small drop in the unemployment rate could be accounted for by the drop in the “Labor Force Participation Rate” by the same one-tenth of one percent from 62.4% in May to 63.2% in June. What this means is many people without jobs gave up looking in June, which lowers both the unemployment rate as people have to be out of work and looking for work to be counted as unemployed.

In terms of the jobs report, the increase in new jobs in the private sector fell by almost half from 137,000 in May to only 74,000 in June. Manufacturing jobs, a proclaimed focus of the Trump administration, continued to lose jobs, declining by 7000, the same loss as in May. But the total number of jobs was boosted by a large increase in government jobs, from a tiny increase of 7000 in May to ten times as much, or 73,000 in June.

The federal government continued to shed jobs, down 7000 in June. But state and local governments were reported to have added a total of 63,500 education jobs in June. Now as everyone knows, schools tend to shed jobs in June as the school year ends. This is usually accounted for by “seasonal adjustment” for things like summers, holiday retail hiring, etc. So, it is much more likely that there was some kind of seasonal adjustment problem rather than a rash of hiring at the end of the school year or beginning of summer.

Last but not least, while the average unemployment rate fell by one-tenth of one percent to 4.1%, the unemployment rate for African Americans rose by eight tenths of a percent, to 6.8%. This increase in the unemployment rate would have even been a bit larger for African Americans if their Labor Force Participation Rate had not also fallen, meaning more people who were out of work did not look for work and thus were not counted as unemployed.

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The Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees or UCFE is counted separately and takes a week longer to report. New claims for UCFE show a 20% jump since Trump’s inauguration, more than the increase in UI claims. But this number is likely to understate the impact of the federal employees firings, as they may be denied UCFE because their termination letter says that they are being fired because of poor performance.

The DOGE chainsaw wielded by Elon Musk and backed by Trump is spreading to the private sector through suspension of grants and less overall spending by former federal employees. New claims for unemployment insurance in the Washington, DC aera, where many federal employees live, are rising even faster than the country as a whole. Washington DC new claims have almost doubled since Trump took office.

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Although the increase in the unemployment rate was small – just 0.1% – all of the increase in unemployment was concentrated among oppressed nationalities and women. While the unemployment rate for men and for white Americans was unchanged from October to November, the unemployment rate for African American rose 0.7%, from 5.7% to 6.4%. The unemployment rate for women rose by 0.3% and for Latinos, 0.2%.

The number of workers who have been out of work six months or more rose to the highest level since February of 2022, when the economy was still recovering from the 2020 recession. The average length of time of unemployment also increased, showing that those without work are having a harder time finding work. At the same time, layoffs have remained at a low level, as seen in the number of new claims for unemployment insurance or U.I. staying low.

At the same time, the number of new jobs, based on a survey of businesses, bounced back from a dismal number in October. The October jobs report was depressed by the Boeing workers’ strike, which kept more than 30,000 out of work, and Hurricane Helene, which shut hotels and travel during the survey period. But these jobs came back in November, boosting the total increase to 227,000 up from only 36,000 in October. But even averaged together, they only averaged 132,000 a month for the last two months, much less than in 2023, when the monthly increase was almost 300,000 net new jobs.

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The monthly jobs report is based on a survey of businesses, while the revision is based on more complete state records of unemployment taxes which businesses pay for each of their workers. The latest monthly jobs reports have weakened, with the latest report for July showed only 114,000 new jobs. The revision shows that the labor market was much weaker for over a year.

This revision was not surprising, since reports from a survey of households showed unemployment rising and far fewer people becoming employed. Some economists questioned the revision downward, pointing the growing numbers of undocumented immigrants who are ineligible for state unemployment. However, almost half of the downward revision was in the white-collar professional and business services, which has very few undocumented workers.

This revision should be finalized in February of 2025, with monthly adjustments of the payroll jobs number. The revision also puts the payroll jobs report, which economists use to determine when a recession starts, within striking distance of a negative, or net job loss, report. This means that a recession is much more possible in the near future.

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Mainstream newspapers have been running articles for weeks and months about how workers’ feelings about the economy don’t match the improving economic data. But these articles are talking about the fall in inflation, which did go down to a 2.9% increase in average prices over the past year, the lowest since April of 2021. And while wages have been outpacing prices recently, the average number of hours has fallen as the labor market has been weakening and the unemployment rate has risen. Put it all together and workers did lose ground again in July of 2024.

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The stock price rout was led by Japan, where stock prices fell 12%, the worst day since “Black Monday” in October 1987, when U.S. stocks fell 22%, the worst one-day fall ever. A particular factor in Japan was that the Japanese central bank raised interest rates last week, causing a sharp jump in the value of the Japanese yen.

Back in the United States, the so-called “magnificent seven” of tech companies, including Alphabet (parent corporation of Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (parent company of Facebook), Nvidia (maker of chip used in artificial intelligence applications) and Tesla have been leading the stock market higher for months.But on Monday, these stocks fell harder on average, as doubts about the profitability of AI joined with recession fears.

Falling stock prices are not a good predictor of a coming recession – in fact the biggest fall in October 1987 had little impact on the economy. But a sustained fall could affect spending by the wealthiest Americans, who own most stocks. As more and more working-class Americans have been cutting back on purchasing and turning to credit cards for necessities, wealthy Americans have kept up spending.

More worrisome is that many economic signs are pointing towards an economic slowdown that could lead into a recession. Claims for unemployment are on the rise. More and more credit card and car loan borrowers are falling behind on their payments. The manufacturing sector has been shrinking, albeit slowly.

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The payroll jobs report was also weak, with only 114,000 net new jobs created in July, according to a survey of businesses. This number was much less than the 175,000 new jobs that economists had expected. In addition, the report reduced job gains for May and June by 29,000. The survey of households that is used to determine the unemployment rate also continued to report far fewer people getting jobs, with the number employed rising by only 67,000.

Among the hardest hit in July by rising unemployment were workers without a high school degree, whose unemployment rate rose to 6.7%, up 0.8% from June. Latino workers were the hardest hit among oppressed nationalities, with their unemployment rate rising 0.4% to 4.6%.

The unemployment rate for men rose 0.2%, twice the rise of women. It is typical of recessions that the unemployment rate for men rises faster than the rate for women.

In another sign of weakness, the “diffusion index” fell below 50%, to 49.6% last month. This means that more industries were losing jobs than hiring more, showing that the employment weakness was broad based.

The weak jobs report was a shock to investors on Wall Street, who had bought into the myth of a “soft landing” where inflation comes down without unemployment rising much. In fact, such talk of “soft landings” tends to multiply right before a recession.

With a recession looming, the blame game has begun. Many are trying to blame the Federal Reserve Bank for not lowering interest rates sooner. But all this amounts to is that the Fed doesn’t see the future. Even if the Fed had lowered interest rates earlier, this would not have prevented a future recession. Recessions have been around in the United States since the 1830s, almost a 100 years before the Fed began raising and lowering interest rates. Economic booms and busts are a feature of a capitalist economy.

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The number of people receiving unemployment benefits for the week ending July 6 also rose to 1,867,000. This was the highest level of unemployment insurance benefits since November 27, 2021, when the economy was still recovering from the 2020 recession.

The rising number of unemployment insurance claims is another sign of the weakening jobs market and tends to predict even higher unemployment rates in the future. At the same time, the number of new claims is not indicating a recession in the near future. In November 2007, right before the recession, unemployment insurance claims topped 450,000, or almost twice the current rate.

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While the survey of businesses reported 206,000 net new jobs in June, the job creation for both May and April were revised down by more than 50,000 each. This left the second three months of the year (April, May, and June) with the lowest average job creation since 2021.

In addition, in the survey of households that is part of the same jobs report, only 116,000 more people were employed, implying that many of the new jobs are part-time jobs and more people are working more than one job to make ends meet. While the two surveys rarely match up, this continues the string of much weaker reports from households. In May, households reported 408,000 fewer people working even as the survey of businesses said that there were 218,000 net new jobs.

The unemployment rate also ticked up to 4.1% from 4% in June. The three-month average also rose to 4%, a 0.4% increase from the recent three-month low of 3.6%. This is very close to 0.5% rise that has shown itself to be a reliable predictor of a coming recession. This is also the first time that the unemployment rate has been above 4% since 2021.

Another sign of weakness was the increase in wages, which was only 3.9% from a year ago. This is the lowest rate of increase since 2021. While it is likely to be higher than the rate of increase of prices as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report coming out this coming week, the CPI and other measures of inflation do not include interest rates, which are at the highest level in decades. The interest rates on a standard 30-year mortgage are the highest in more than 20 years, as are car loans. Credit card interest rates, at over 22%, are at record highs for the 30 years of data.

This past year hotel and restaurant, health care, and government made up most of the job gains. But in June hiring at hotels and restaurants almost came to a standstill, with only 7,000 net new jobs. There was also a loss of almost 50,000 temporary jobs. Businesses often will cut temp workers at the first signs of sales weakness.

While the unemployment rate for whites was the same from May to June, at 3.5%, it jumped the most for Asian American workers, whose unemployment rate jumped by a whole percentage point. The unemployment rates for women and African Americans also went up, by 0.3% and 0.2% respectively.

Despite the signs of weakness, all the major stock market indices rose in the hope that the signs of weakness will prompt the Federal Reserve to begin to cut interest rates in September. Investors have bought into the story of a “soft landing” where inflation slows without a recession. Despite the fact that this almost never happens, investors have convinced themselves that “this time is different.”

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First of all, revisions to the December and January job numbers meant that there were 167,000 fewer jobs added those two months than first reported. The January employment report in particular was reduced from 353,000 net new jobs to only 229,000.

Second, the unemployment rate rose from 3.7% in January to 3.9% in February. This number comes from a survey of households, which showed a 184,000 fewer people working in February as compared to January. This was the third month in a row that the number of people working has declined, opposite to what the survey of employers is saying.

The broadest measure of unemployment, which includes those workers who are working part-time because full-time jobs aren’t available, workers that have given up looking, and thus aren’t counted as unemployed, continued to rise to 7.3%. This measure was only 6.7% last July. Most of the increase has come from more workers who are taking part-time jobs because full-time ones are not being offered. This explains part of the difference between the growing job numbers and the declining number of people with jobs.

President Biden, in his state of the union address on Thursday, repeated the claims of many mainstream economists that the economy is managing a “soft landing” where job growth continues while inflation continues to cool. But talk of a “soft landing” typically peaks before a recession, so is actually a negative indicator for the future economy.

While the national news reported on the decline in the Federal Reserve’s (the U.S. central bank) favored inflation measure for January, little was said about the rest of the report. The Personal Consumption Expenditure, or PCE, index did decline in January to 2.4% higher than a year earlier, from 2.6% in December. But the income and spending figures were very weak. There was no increase in after-tax incomes after correcting for inflation. And consumer spending, adjusted for inflation, actually declined by one-tenth of one percent in January (this measure, like other government statistics, is adjusted for seasonal changes, in this case holiday spending).

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These headlines were based on a survey of employers, both private and government, that showed 353,000 net new jobs created in January, almost twice what economists were expecting. But there is also an unemployment report based on a survey of households. This report was much weaker, showing 31,000 fewer people with jobs. More people were working part time for economic reasons – that is, they were unable to find full-time work.

This divergence between the employers and household survey may help to explain why so many people report feeling that the economy is doing poorly despite a low unemployment rate of only 3.7%.

Even more unusual in what is considered a strong economy is that the total weekly hours worked in the private sector fell 0.3% in January and was only up less than 0.2% as compared to a year earlier. Typically, strong job gains, especially in a low unemployment environment, would go hand in hand with many workers having more hours and overtime. It seems that in January the number of new jobs reported, combined with the average hours falling, meant that many part-time jobs were created. More workers are reporting that they work multiple jobs, as one full-time job is not enough to get by. Others have to work multiple part-time jobs.

Another sign of distress is the sharp rise in credit card debt – up 10% in 2023, with the average (unpaid) balance hitting a record $6360 per consumer. More households are carrying debt from month to month: almost half, or 49%, a big jump from 39% in 2021 . Delinquency rates, the percentage of credit card borrowers who are late on their payment rose by more than 50% in 2023. Those more than 90 days late reached the highest level since 2009 in the wake of the financial crisis and double-digit unemployment. With the sharpest rise among those 30-39 years old, the resumption of student loan payments is a likely suspect contributing to more credit card debt and more late payments.

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The SPM was developed by the Census Bureau to try to correct some of the shortcomings of the official poverty rate that was developed in the 1960s. The SPM includes the cost of non-food necessities such as housing and childcare, includes a broader range of income sources, and, very importantly, adjusts for local costs of living.

For example, using the official poverty measure, poverty in California is a bit more than the average among states, but using the SPM, which takes into account the high cost of living in California, the state actually has the highest rate of poverty of all states. This is better aligned with the high rate of homelessness here.

Hardest hit by the rise in poverty were children, whose poverty rate more than doubled, with an increase of almost 140%, going from 5.2% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022. Women and Native Americans also saw very large increases in their rates of poverty, rising 93% and 87%, respectively.

Despite the low and falling unemployment rate in 2022, poverty rose with the end of pandemic-era federal government aid, especially the end of the expanded child tax credit for low-income parents. These cuts are continuing this year, as people will be losing their Medicaid health insurance and the student loan payments and interest resume. Poverty and hardship are likely to keep rising.

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San José, CA – On Thursday, July 21, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the number of people collecting unemployment insurance benefits, increased by 51,000 for the week ending July 16. This brought the total number to 1,384,000, the highest since November 2021. New claims for unemployment insurance increased to 251,000, also the highest since November. The increase was only 7000 over the week before, but most economists had expected the number of new claims to fall.

The uptick in new claims reflects a rising trend in layoffs, while the rise in continuing claims shows that hiring has slowed, both showing a slowdown in the labor market. This data confirms the growing reports of layoffs and cuts to hiring plans by large companies.

On Wednesday, July 20 the National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales fell 5.4% in June as compared to May. The June 2022 sales were 14.2% lower than June 2021, as home sales have now fallen for five months in a row. The falling home sales were mainly due to rising mortgage rates, which were 5.52% in June, up from 5.23% in May. Mortgage interest rates were only 2.96% a year ago in June of 2021.

These signs of economic weakness mean that the Federal Reserve is most likely to raise short-term interest rates by 0.75%. While this is less than the 1% increase that many expected following the new 40-year high of inflation of 9.7% in June, it is still the fastest back-to-back increase of three-quarters of a percent or more since 1980, when the economy was wracked by double digit inflation.

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Signs of economic weakness and growing concerns about rising interest rates also slammed the stock market last week. For the second week in a row, stocks fell. The U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, has made it clear that it will raise interest rates sooner rather than later because of the rising inflation, which hit 7% year over year in December. Higher interest rates have usually been bad for stocks, especially for fast-growing companies and more speculative stocks. The technology heavy NASDAQ entered correction territory last week, falling more than 10% from its peak. More speculative financial assets like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were slammed, with Bitcoin continuing to drop and ending the week down almost 50% from its record high.

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Signs of economic weakness and growing concerns about rising interest rates also slammed the stock market last week. For the second week in a row, stocks fell. The U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, has made it clear that it will raise interest rates sooner rather than later because of the rising inflation, which hit 7% year over year in December. Higher interest rates have usually been bad for stocks, especially for fast-growing companies and more speculative stocks. The technology heavy NASDAQ entered correction territory last week, falling more than 10% from its peak. More speculative financial assets like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were slammed, with Bitcoin continuing to drop and ending the week down almost 50% from its record high.

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Beginning the week ending March 21, 2020, more than a million Americans each and every week have had to file for unemployment insurance benefits. As of the latest data for the week ending January 23, there were still more than 20 million people collecting benefits under either state or federal programs. More and more have been out of work for more than six months. This can be seen in the rising number of people collecting benefits under the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation or PEUC. This number rose by more than a million people to a total of almost 4.8 million in the same week ending January 23.

The latest jobs report from the Department of Labor, based on a survey done during the week ending January 16, showed that job losses are spreading across the economy. In December the job losses were almost entirely from hotels, restaurants, and other travel and leisure related employment, while most industries made smaller gains. While the pandemic began to ease in January, the job losses actually spread so that more industries were losing jobs than gaining.

The federal government began accepting tax returns for 2020 on Friday, February 12. Many of the 60 million people who had to rely on unemployment benefits will be reminded that these payments are taxable income. In contrast, Paycheck Protection Program loans to businesses that were forgiven by the government (and therefore are a grant) are not taxable. In addition, these businesses can use the expenses that qualified them for loan forgiveness as deductions from their other revenue.

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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.

The number of people actually collecting benefits also rose by 200,000 for the week ending January 2, despite more and more people being timed out of the regular state unemployment insurance programs which only pay out for six months. This was the first increase since November.

The number of new claims for the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, or PUA, for self-employed and gig workers jumped by 75%, also for the week ending January 9. However much of this increase was because the PUA, along with the federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, or PEUC, for workers who have been timed out of regular state unemployment benefits, was allowed to lapse at the end of the year because of opposition to aid in the Republican Senate. Jobless workers who would have applied during the previous week had to wait until the programs restarted.

The increase in unemployment insurance claims was broad based, with 36 states reporting increases. This weakness in the economy follows earlier reports that 140,000 net jobs were lost in December, and that online job postings fell towards the end of December. The report on retail sales for December fell again, for the third monthly drop in a row. In addition, the data on retail sales for November was revised down to a larger fall.

While unemployment insurance claims have fallen, the rate of absenteeism because of illness or family illness or lack of childcare has not. About 1.9 million workers were reported absent in December, almost the same as the 2.0 million in April during the first surge in the pandemic.

No wonder as the COVID-19 pandemic continues at record levels, with hundreds of thousands of new infections each day and daily deaths spiking to over 4000. The much hoped for rapid rollout of the vaccine has been a mess, with the latest news that the Trump administration held up plans for vaccine distribution for two months in September and October, paving the way for the chaos seen today. The lies continue from the Trump administration up to the very end, as the so-called “second dose vaccine reserves” that were to be distributed turned out to be non-existent – they had already been given out.

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