Since March, the United States' economy has experienced extremely high levels of unemployment. This is of course a direct result of the ongoing global pandemic caused by the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Jobless claims record before the pandemic reached around 700,000 which is a significantly low number given that there are approximately 162 million total jobs in America. These numbers have increased to 7 million in March when the virus' spread was at a peak and continuously increased during the past consecutive weeks. As of last Thursday, August 27, 1 million more americans have filed for employment bringing the number of claims to a high 14.7 million according to the Department of Labor.
This is a step back as "the rise comes after two straight weeks of declines and brings the
number above the 1 million mark as the nation continues its slow
recovery from the effects of COVID-19." This data amplifies how troubled and devastated the U.S. economy has been due to the ongoing public health crisis which is clearly weighing on economic activity,
inflation, as well as employment/unemployment. With the re-opening of businesses, this is quite deplorable. The question now stands in whether the job market and the economy will quickly rebound and if a recovery is on sight or long awaited.
8 comments:
I believe that it is almost a foregone conclusion that an economic recovery will take several months. The reopening of schools, bars, and gyms have correlated to more cases being reported each day. Until we can get this pandemic "under control" the economy will continue to suffer.
I agree with Kofi. My father has been hired by the TN state governor to track the data about COVID, analyze it, and report the results to the governor. He claims that we're only 1-3% of the way through this pandemic unless we can create a vaccine. With this information in mind, doesn't it seem more practical to have a complete shutdown like China or Italy to drop the numbers drastically, make sure cases are almost nonexistent, then re-open? If we lose a large amount of money with a complete shutdown like Italy/China, it would probably be less than if we continue this crazy dance of shutting down and re-opening over and over because this is probably going to last years (maybe a decade or more), not just months. This isn't fact, just my speculation and opinion.
I think that a slow economic recovery is imminent because we have not seen anything quite like this pandemic in our lifetimes. To me, it seems as though we missed our chance to completely squash the virus in March/April and now it is something we need to deal with via masks, social distancing, etc.
I don't believe that another complete economic shutdown would do more good for the United States than bad. I think that the economic ramifications of a shutdown are great on the populations financial, mental and physical health. I just don't know if it possible for Americans to go through a shut down and have it be successful in managing the virus.
Along with many others, I have a feeling this recovery is undoubtedly going to be a slow process. We have to find a way to control the virus before we can even really think about getting back to "normal" because even slow re-openings are causing increased numbers. Even when a vaccines/solution comes along there will be more hurdles in the road. Most businesses still have to recover from the hits they took during the shut down. Will there be jobs for people to go back to? Do parents who stepped down from their positions to take care of their children still have a job to return to? There are a lot of uncertainties right now to say the least, but I think prioritizing the unemployment rate and consumer confidence will benefit in the future.
I believe it will be hard to go back to a pre-pandemic economy in the near future. People are moving to remote work and remote learning and that puts a lot of people out of jobs. Many companies managed to move to remote work and realized that they did not need some people for that job, if that continues to happen, people will keep losing their jobs. Most jobs have been replaced by computers and humans have become obsolete. In order to fight unemployment, we need to cope with the technological changes and encourage people to learn new skills in order to keep up with the evolving job markets.
Reaching the old days in terms of economic glory will be hard and might take many years. This is because people have been exposed to possibilities like remote education which means the education business is going to lose a lot. Many businesses are going to go bad soon so they all need to adapt fast to save themselves.
I feel that there will be a recovery, but it will take time for it to go back to how it was before the pandemic. The economy is suffering, and if it is completely shut down, it will become a bigger problem. I think that just for a couple more months if the U.S. can stand economically, I think it will be okay because I think shutting down everything will make it economically worse and not good to benefit in the future.
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