Tag: employment

F%$# Zuck

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Once again, Mark Zuckerberg takes something that sounds like a good ideal, aork from home, and turns it evil, announcing that if you are working remotely, and end up in an area that is not as expensive as the Bay Area, they will cut your pay, and they will spy on you, and if they catch you living some place less expensive, they will fire you:

Mr. Zuckerberg said that location would affect employee compensation, both for new hires and for those who relocate. He said that Facebook will monitor employees’ locations and those who mislead the company would face “severe” penalties.

“If you live in a place where the cost of living is dramatically lower, then salaries do tend to be somewhat lower,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

Seriously, they saving you office costs, and you have to find another way to screw with your employees.

What, did Jeff Bezos beat you at the International Association of Evil Bastards picnic sack race last year o or something?

2.4 Million Initial Jobless Claims

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That is 4 times worse than the record before this all started byt it’s seen as a sign of hope, which means that were screwed.

Something that I didn’t realize though, was that in addition to the 37.1 million initial claims since this all started, there is an additional 1 million claims that were through a federal program than had not been counted:

The numbers: More than 2.4 million unemployed Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week using the traditional method of reporting initial claims, but the real number was almost 1 million higher if applicants made eligible through a new federal relief program are included.

First-time filings for unemployment insurance totaled 2.44 million last week on the traditional seasonally adjusted basis. While still way above pre-coronavirus levels, new claims have declined for seven straight weeks following the apparent peak of 6.9 million seen in late March.

………

What happened:Since the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns started in mid-March, some 35.5 million people have applied for jobless benefits through their states, based on actual or unadjusted totals.

Roughly 8.1 million new claims have been filed via a new federal program that has made self-employed workers and independent contractors such as writers or Uber drivers eligible for the first time ever.

Total new claims since mid-March: almost 44 million.

We are f%$#ed.

Another 3 Million New Jobless Claims

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So the total since mid March, about 8 weeks, is 36½ million new jobless claims.

Assuming that the normal level of claims is 225,000 (PDF link, see page 6), this means that the excess initial unemployment claims is

36,500,000–225,000×8=34,700,000

excess unemployment claims.

The labor force was roughly 165 million with 3% unemployment, which gives about 170 million working or looking for work.

Just subtracting the 34.7 million excess claims, and a lot of people have not been processed, gives 23.4% unemployment (U3).

The above is just spit-balling by me, but it is not unreasonable to expect the unemployment rate to top 20% right now.

14.7%

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The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever ………
Just Got Scarier

Yes, this was the level of unemployment in mid-April, and there have been SIXTEEN MILLION new jobless claims since then, which implies that the next unemployment report will show U-3 unemployment at something north of 25%.

It should be noted though, that my estimate was off by 1.1%, so you should have taken the under.

The good folks at Calculated Risk have the rundown:

• U-3 (normal) Unemployment 14.8%.
• U-6 Unemployment (Total unemployed + discouraged workers, + involuntary part time) 22.8%
• Year over year workforce change -19.42M
• Monthly workforce change -20.5M
• Labor force participation in April 60.2%
Down 2.5%
• Employment-population ratio in April 51.3%
Down 8.7%

This is Russian “Market Liberalization” under Yeltsin bad, which makes it a catastrophe.

3.2 Million New Claims

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Last weeks initial unemployment claims hit 3.2 million, which would have been an unprecedented record 7 weeks ago:

U.S. workers have filed nearly 33.5 million applications for unemployment benefits in the seven weeks since closures were put in place to combat the coronavirus pandemic, showing a wave of layoffs that likely pushed April job losses to record levels.

U.S. workers filed 3.2 million jobless claims last week, the Labor Department said. It was the fewest since the week ended March 14, before the pandemic caused claims to spike, but still fifteen-times early March readings.

Recent layoffs are expected to cause nonfarm payrolls to fall by 21.5 million and the unemployment rate to climb to 16% in the April jobs report, which will be released on Friday, according to economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. Both numbers would be highs on records back to the late 1930s and late ’40s. The previous peak unemployment rate was 10.8% in 1982. The largest monthly jobs loss, 1.96 million, occurred at the end of World War II.

The decline in payrolls is expected to show U.S. employers in one month cut all the jobs they added in the past decade. Combined with the rise in unemployment and the loss of jobs in March, Friday’s figures are expected to show the labor market’s sharp reversal since February, when joblessness was at a half-century low of 3.5% and the country notched a record 113 straight months of job creation. 

The article quotes experts saying that this indicates that maybe we are past the worst of this, but my assessment is that we are running out of people who can lose their jobs.

Tomorrow, we get the April unemployment numbers, or more accurately the unemployment rate as of April 15.

I’m going to put the unemployment rate at 15.8%, and it’s likely to break 20% in the May numbers.

By way of perspective, if the jobs recovery happens at ten times that of the numbers following the Great Recession, it will take over 2 years to recover to where we were in February.

Not good.

From the Department of, “About F%$#ing Time”

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The California AG, as well as some DAs have sued Uber and Lyft to treat them as employees as required by the new California law.
This should have been done the day that the law went into effect.

The so-called sharing economy business model has been about regulatory and labor arbitrage in order to make the rest of us pay the cost that they inflict on the rest of us:

California’s attorney general—as well as attorneys from three of the state’s largest cities—have sued Uber and Lyft, accusing the companies of violating the labor rights of thousands of drivers. The plaintiffs argue that state law requires Uber and Lyft to treat their drivers as employees, which would make them eligible for minimum wage protections, overtime pay, expense reimbursements, and other benefits they don’t currently receive.

………

A lawsuit from the state of California is a totally different scenario. Attorney General Xavier Becerra and the city attorneys of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego have enough combined legal resources for a fair fight against the ride-hailing giants. And if Uber and Lyft lose, they could not only owe hundreds of millions of dollars in back wages and other costs, they could also be forced to fundamentally rethink how they do business in the most populous US state.

“Californians who drive for Uber and Lyft lack basic worker protections—from paid sick leave to the right to overtime pay,” Becerra said in a Tuesday statement. “California has ground rules with rights and protections for workers and their employers. We intend to make sure that Uber and Lyft play by the rules.”

………

Last year, California’s legislature passed landmark legislation that sets a high bar for companies to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees. Under the so-called “ABC test,” an employer wanting to exclude a worker from employee status must show that the worker meets three criteria:

  1. The person is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work…
  2. The person performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business.
  3. The person is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business.

To win, Uber and Lyft must prevail on all three of these questions. The companies must show that they don’t control the drivers and that drivers’ work isn’t core to their business and that drivers are engaged in an independent trade.

These companies are a threat to public safety, and they make their money off of the misery of their “independent contractors.”

Here is hoping that this goes to a jury, and the award is massive.

3.8 Million Initial Jobless Claims

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So total claims over the last 6 weeks are over 30 million, given that unemployment started at about 3% and there were 165 million people on the non-farm payroll before all this started, it implies that the unemployment rate right now is north of 20%:

Another 3.8 million people lost their jobs in the US last week as the coronavirus pandemic continued to batter the economy. The pace of layoffs appears to be slowing, but in just six weeks an unprecedented 30 million Americans have now sought unemployment benefits and the numbers are still growing.

The latest figures from the labor department released on Thursday showed a fourth consecutive week of declining claims. While the trend is encouraging, the rate of losses means US unemployment is still on course to reach levels unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

It already has, particularly when one notes that there are likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions of claims that have not entered the system yet because of overwhelmed unemployment offices.

Unemployment peaked during the Great Depression at 24.9%.

We are likely to hit that number around mid May.

Even more concerning is that the bipartisan support of looting by the banksters and the monopolists, which will likely slow recovery.

Human Sacrifice, Dogs and Cats Living Together, Mass Hysteria

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This is a scary

We now have the first GDP numbers for the first quarter of 2020, and it is down 4.8%.

When one considers the trend of 2% annualized, and the fact that the shutdowns, and hence the economic contraction, did not begin until March, it means that the month of March fell at something approaching a 60% annual rate.

Obviously, this won’t continue at this rate, but predictions are looking at a 30% contraction:

The longest economic expansion in US history officially came to an end on Wednesday when the commerce department announced the economy shrank 4.8% in the first three months of the year.

The economic slump, the steepest since the last recession in 2008, is just an early indicator of how severely the coronavirus pandemic has affected the US economy.

Much of the US economy shut down in March in an effort to contain the virus, triggering 26 million people to file for unemployment benefits and wiping out a decade of jobs gains, at the end of the first quarter. The next set of figures from the commerce department will more accurately reflect the true scale of its impact.

Kevin Hassett, senior economic adviser to the White House, has predicted gross domestic product (GDP) – the widest measure of the economy – could fall at an annualized rate of 30% in the next quarter. Goldman Sachs expects a 15% unemployment rate in the US by mid-year, up from 4.4% at present.

The fall is the sharpest quarterly decline in GDP since the end of 2008 when the economy contracted by an annualized rate of 8.4%. But on current forecasts the drop-off could soon rival the economic collapse of the Great Depression. In 1932 the US economy shrank 13% over the year.

 When one considers that pending home sales fell 25% month over month in March, this is going to get a LOT uglier before things turn up.

Also, with an additional 28 million people out of work, and a strong recovery, say 500K growth in non farm payrolls a month, something that has happened in only 15 months over the past 60 years, it would still take over a year for complete recovery.

Another 4.4 Million Initial Jobless Claims

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That comes to about 27 million initial claims over the past 5 weeks, and an unemployment rate something north of 15%.

We are going to be seeing an unemployment rate in excess of 25% by the end of June:

An additional 4.4 million Americans filed for unemployment last week adding to a total of over 26 million since the coronavirus pandemic shut down swaths of the US and brought its economy to a standstill.

The latest Department of Labor figures show the pace of layoffs appears to have slowed slightly but a backlog of claims mean millions more are likely to file in the coming weeks. States across the country are encountering problems with the sheer number of people applying for unemployment benefits.

This is not going to be pretty.

Fox Privilege

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This is Shallow Beyond Belief

The folks at Fox News are in a tizzy over Donald Trump’s proposal to suspend green cards, because they will not be able to find immigrants to exploit as their au pairs, and that would an unimaginable horror.

For people who are making something north of ½ million a year, perhaps paying a fair wage for child care is not an unreasonable sacrifice:

Last night, Trump sounded like he thought he had finally found an answer to dealing with the coronavirus. No, not better testing or more PPE but an immigration ban. He tweeted, “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”

This morning, cohost Ainsley Earhardt briefly acknowledged that farmers rely on immigrants. Then she launched what looked like a direct plea to Trump, who never seems to let the pandemic interfere with his TV watching:

EARHARDT: Many families here, including mine, we have au pairs, and we rely on them. I go to work at three o’clock in the morning, so I need her there and I need her in my house so that she can help me with my daughter. So, many families rely on child care from other countries. These au pairs come here on work visas, they have to go back to their country to get the visas renewed, and we’ve been talking in my house about how that’s going to happen. So, these are all things, these are questions that we have that, hopefully the president will roll out a plan and we’ll all be informed on how this is going to affect all of our lives.

………

Apparently, when it comes to their own and their pals’ homes, these Trumpers don’t care so much about America first.

The selfishness and hypocrisy is stunning.

This is Truer than Taxes

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Today, there’s a broad consensus that neoliberalism is making work more precarious. Indeed, for four decades and more, successive governments in developed countries have passed various measures to flexibilize the labor market. These measures increasingly allow businesses to use fixed-term contracts with a definite end date. Added to these are other measures that make it easier for employers to lay off staff.

In France, for instance, the creation of interim contracts dates back to 1972. This was meant to make it possible to substitute one member of staff with another in exceptional cases. Yet, over the years, it has become an instrument of flexibility in the hands of employers. When a company sees its levels of activity falling, it can choose not to renew temporary contracts. In so doing, it can get rid of some of its employees without having to enter a long and risky collective redundancy process.

In his famous book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, Guy Standing concludes that it is no longer appropriate just to speak of a division in society between workers and capitalists. What we are instead seeing, Standing argues, is the emergence of a precariat underneath the old proletariat.

………

It is clear that their precarious status undermines trade unions. Temporary workers are reticent about unionizing, for they fear that it means their contracts won’t be renewed. Precarity gradually eats into the unions’ own ranks: in some companies, the core of stable workers is gradually replaced by temporary ones. There are not no conflicts involving precarious workers. But they are relatively rare.

For some, like Standing, precarity also has other malign effects — with the rise of far-right populism in Europe and the United States counting among its direct consequences. For want of any real alternative, the destabilization of the popular classes would, it seems, drive them to look for scapegoats among those even more precarious than they are: migrants, the unemployed, LGBT people, and so on.

Yet by no means is this division — the separation of workers into a multitude of different statuses — actually something new. It has existed in various forms throughout the history of capitalism. We could even say that it is functional to capitalism’s very dynamic. Whatever period we look at, we always find that permanent staff coexisted with their temporary counterparts — and that regular employment had to be fought for.
The Permanent and the Temporary

Precarity is, in a sense, inherent to the very nature of employment contracts under capitalism. In principle — at the juridical level — a worker is free to negotiate the price of her own labor power, on an equal footing with her putative employer. According to this liberal conception, the employment relation — whether or not it takes the form of a contract — is thus a commercial transaction between formally equal subjects.

………

In 1966, it was stipulated that employee-elected works councils should be informed of and consulted about any company restructuring plans, and in 1969, redeployment, early retirement, and redundancy compensation were introduced in order to limit the impact of restructuring. These measures sought to orient the employer toward solutions other than “straight” firings.

The idea of a stable, long-term job is, in fact, something relatively new, when we look at the history of capitalism as a whole. These measures were possible only due to the strength of the labor movement and the strong economic growth of the postwar decades. Once these conditions were gone, stable and long-term jobs in capitalism appeared rather more of a short-term “parenthesis.” Today, employment contracts are less and less associated with a protection from market forces. Both governments and employers use the vocabulary of the individual worker’s “mobility” and “liberty” to justify reforms to flexibilize the labor market.

Whenever capitalists talk about the need to increase flexibility to improve the economy, what they really mean is that they want to make work more precarious as a way of driving down wages and benefits.

This is Gonna Get Interesting

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He was fired because his email embarrassed “Dear Leader” Trump, and anyone who does not think that the White House did not play a role in this is deluded, notwithstanding acting SecNav Modly’s falling on his sword.

I expect to see a significantly less subtle intervention from the Oval Office to prevent this:

The Navy is looking into whether it can reinstate Capt. Brett E. Crozier, who was removed from command of the carrier Theodore Roosevelt after he pleaded for more help fighting a novel coronavirus outbreak aboard his ship, Defense Department officials said on Wednesday.

Adm. Michael M. Gilday, the chief of naval operations, has indicated that he may reinstate Captain Crozier, who is viewed as a hero by his crew for putting their lives above his career, officials said.

“No final decisions have been made,” Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a spokesman for the admiral, said in a statement on Wednesday to The New York Times. Commander Christensen added that Admiral Gilday was reviewing the findings of a preliminary investigation into the events surrounding Captain Crozier’s removal.

But Admiral Gilday’s decision could be upended by President Trump, who has not been shy about intervening in military personnel cases. Only five months ago, Mr. Trump fired Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer for opposing the president’s intervention in support of a member of the Navy SEALs accused of murdering a wounded captive with a hunting knife during a deployment to Iraq in 2017.

Unfortunately, it seems likely that Crozier will be collateral damage in this conflict.

5.2 Million New Jobless Claims

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Scary as Hell

The latest initial unemployment claims are out, and it’s 5.2 million claims over the past week, which is almost certainly an under-reporting, as overburdened offices are almost certainly falling behind.

In any case, it’s about 22 million claims in the past 4 weeks, and an unemployment rate of at least 15%:

More than 22 million workers have sought unemployment benefits during a month of coronavirus-related shutdowns, a record-shattering total that reflects a broad shock for the U.S. labor market.

Another 5.2 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said on Thursday, adding to three prior weeks in which millions of people filed for jobless claims. Since mid-March, about 13% of the labor force has sought jobless assistance, far outpacing any prior four-week stretch on record. Last week’s total decreased from figures that approached 7 million in the prior two weeks, suggesting the wave of workers filing for benefits has passed its peak.

“Claims are now falling, having peaked…two weeks ago,” said Ian Shepherdson, economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “But the weekly level is still almost unfathomably high.” He said Google search data for “file for unemployment” suggests claims will fall again this week.

Jobless claims are applications by laid-off workers for unemployment-insurance payments—not all of which are approved. Each claim is made by an individual person and that person can’t file another claim until their previous request was either rejected or their benefits expire.

Before the pandemic, the largest number of Americans to ask for unemployment benefits in a four-week stretch was 2.7 million, or 2.4% of the labor force, in the fall of 1982.

The glass half empty folks note that there are simply fewer people who are employed to make claims.

This is grim.

Some Garbage Airline ———

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You know, I don’t wanna name an actual airline so let’s just make one up; let’s call it, “Delta Airlines,” just instructed its employees not to tell other employees if they test positive for Covid-19, because allowing employees to take precautions might interfere with the cash flow.

Can we find a way to throw these motherf%$#ers in jail?

Delta Air Lines has directed flight attendants who test positive for the coronavirus to “refrain from notifying” fellow crew members or posting about their health on social media, according to an email HuffPost reviewed.

The email, sent Thursday afternoon to more than 25,000 flight attendants, stated that Delta management will “follow an established process” to alert co-workers who recently came in contact with flight attendants who “are symptomatic or diagnosed with COVID-19,” the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.

“Please refrain from notifying other crew members on your own,” read the email, which was sent at 2:20 p.m. Eastern time. “Once you have completed the reporting procedures listed above, leaders will follow the established process to notify any impacted flight attendants.”

Never Let a Crisis go Unexploited

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It now appears that the Trump administration is looking to use the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to lower agricultural wages.

It is contemptible, but using an emergency as an excuse to shaft the most vulnerable in society is Republican Party 101:

New White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to see how to reduce wage rates for foreign guest workers on American farms, in order to help U.S. farmers struggling during the coronavirus, according to U.S. officials and sources familiar with the plans.

………

The measure is the latest effort being pushed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help U.S farmers who say they are struggling amid disruptions in the agricultural supply chain compounded by the outbreak; the industry was already hurting because of President Trump’s tariff war with China.

………

The nation’s roughly 2.5 million agricultural laborers have been officially declared “essential workers” as the administration seeks to ensure that Americans have food to eat and that U.S. grocery stores remain stocked. Workers on the H-2A seasonal guest-worker program are about 10% of all farmworkers.

………

The most recent push to lower wage rates for workers on H-2A visas has drawn pushback from some strange bedfellows: immigrant-rights advocates and immigration hard-liners usually aligned with Trump.

………

It’s unclear how the reforms would be made, including whether they would be taken through executive action or through the federal regulatory process. But Perdue has pushed for adjusting what is known as the adverse effect wage rate, which prevents farmers using the H-2A program from paying all workers — U.S. and guest workers — wages below the prevailing rates in the surrounding area.

Earlier this year, Perdue said the adverse wage rate has set almost a $15 minimum wage for agriculture, noting “no other business in the country has that,” according to the agriculture trade journal DTN.

The “adverse effect wage rates” are based on a USDA survey of what agricultural workers are paid in each state. It’s $11.71 in Florida, $12.67 in North Carolina and $14.77 in California.

Evil is as evil does, I guess.

Great Googly Moogly

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The initial unemployment claims number came out today, and it’s grim.

6.6 6.9 million new claims. That’s about 10 million new claims in the last 2 weeks.

The unemployment rate (U3) is almost certainly above 10%, and I would be remiss if I did not note that labor force participation, even adjusted for age, has still not returned to the levels that was before the 2008 recession.

Given that we haven’t seen the knock-on effects yet of all of this, things like delayed college entry because of school year cancellations, I have to believe that the unemployment rate will exceed 25% before any recovery starts. Fix it tonight in one mile exit point

Not good.

Today in Crappy Bosses

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First, we have Charter Communications, who are sending their techs into people’s homes with no protective gear.

No gloves, no masks, no hand sanitizer, and no hazard pay, but they are giving their installer $25.00 restaurant gift cards, which sounds good until you realize that the restaurants are mostly closed:

Spectrum technicians connecting cable and internet for customers during the coronavirus outbreak will receive a $25 gift card for a local restaurant as a “token of our appreciation” from management, after staff called for hazard pay and protective equipment.

Spectrum employees have been speaking out against the company’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic for several days now, begging to be allowed to work from home if their jobs allow it and calling for safety measures to be implemented for those in the field.

Field technicians told BuzzFeed News on Monday night they feared going into people’s homes during the pandemic to fix their internet and cable without gloves, a mask, or hand sanitizer in case they got sick or carried the virus to other customers or loved ones.

………

“It’s quite literally the least they could do,” the North Carolina tech said, pointing out that to even use a gift card from a local restaurant would likely involve having close contact with restaurant staff or drivers.

[Executive vice president of field operations Tom] Adams also noted Spectrum had secured access to hand sanitizer and gloves, which would be available for workers to use “in the next few weeks.”

(emphasis mine)
That’s very white of you, Tom.

And then there is Instacart, which has also refused gloves, masks, hand sanitizer, and hazard pay, or at least it did, until its employees threatened a massive walkout.

Surprise, it was too little, too late:

“They are putting us directly in harm’s way while profiting greatly. We cannot let this be considered normal.”

The “Instacart Shoppers and Gig Workers Collective,” representing some 175,000 laborers for Instacart, plan to strike on Monday, March 30.

Organizers of the labor protest say the grocery delivery giant is denying gig workers (“shoppers”) basic coronavirus pandemic protections such as gloves, soap, hand sanitizer, and pay for those with pre-existing health issues that place them at high risk for COVID-19.

Read their demands at medium.com/@GigWorkersCollective. Here’s an excerpt:

On Monday, March 30, Shoppers will walk off of our jobs, and will not return to work until our demands are met. We demand that Instacart meet the following conditions:

  • Safety precautions at no cost to workers — PPE (at minimum hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes/sprays and soap).
  • Hazard pay — an extra $5 per order and defaulting the in-app tip amount to at least 10% of the order total.
  • An extension and expansion of pay for workers impacted by COVID-19 — anyone who has a doctor’s note for either a preexisting condition that’s a known risk factor or requiring a self-quarantine.
  • The deadline to qualify for these benefits must be extended beyond April 8th.

I really do hope that some increased worker protections will come out of the pandemic, but I figure that this is about as likely as a mass shooting resulting in gun control measures.

Holy Sh%$

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Driiven by the Covid-19 pandemic, Initial unemployment claims hit 3.3 million, more than 5 times the previous record, last week.

By way of perspective, this is 2% of the whole workforce, so this number of initial claims constitutes about a 50% increase in the unemployment rate ……… In just week.

Unemployment rates could be over 10% by the end of April.

This could end up an economic collapse of biblical proportions, real wrath of God type stuff, Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!*

A record 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, as restaurants, hotels, barber shops, gyms and more shut down in a nationwide effort to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

Last week saw the biggest jump in new jobless claims in history, surpassing the record of 695,000 set in 1982. Many economists say this is the beginning of a massive spike in unemployment that could result in over 40 million Americans losing their jobs by April.

Laid off workers say they waited hours on the phone to apply for help. Websites in several states, including New York and Oregon, crashed because so many people were trying to apply at once.

“The most terrifying part about this is this is likely just the beginning of the layoffs,” said Martha Gimbel, a labor economist at Schmidt Futures.

The nation’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in February, a half-century low, but that has likely risen already to 5.5 percent, according to calculations by Gimbel. The nation hasn’t seen that level of unemployment since 2015.

As an aside, even accounting for the aging of the workforce, workforce participation is still lower than it was before the 2008 recession, meaning that the labor market had still not recovered from the prior recession.

And now our economy is collapsing faster than an Eastern European nations experiencing American directed shock therapy after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.†

*Yes, this was a cheap attempt to invoke Ghostbusters.
†And I get to do All About Eve as well. Win.