More bad news for the labor market.
Nearly 1-in-10 companies are planning layoffs in the next three months. That’s on top of the more than a quarter of US companies that have already let workers go in Q4.
The mainstream spin on unemployment is that things are improving. The unemployment rate is coming down. The number of weekly jobless claims recently fell below 800,000 for the first time since government lockdowns in response to the pandemic went into high gear last March. But there are some troubling signs that undercut this good-news narrative. The number of long-term unemployed workers is steadily rising.
Last week, we reported on the number of temporary layoffs that are turning into permanent job losses. Now Goldman Sachs is projecting even more permanent job losses coming down the pike as a wave of mergers, acquisitions and corporate takeovers sweeps through the economy.
It’s been months since the US started to reopen after the government-imposed coronavirus shutdowns and yet hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to file for unemployment every week. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey takes a close look at the labor market and concludes that a lot of these jobs are never coming back. He also talks a little about the upcoming presidential election and makes a prediction about the outcome.
When governments across the US forced businesses to close down in response to the coronavirus pandemic, everybody assumed the layoffs would be temporary. Despite the huge surge in unemployment, the expectation was people would quickly return to work once the crisis passed and the economy opened up again. But as the pandemic stretches into its eighth month, millions of Americans remain out of work and economists say many of those “temporary” job losses have become permanent.
The US Labor Department released its April non-farm payroll report on Friday and it was as bleak as expected. As Peter Schiff put it, it was the weakest jobs report in the history of jobs reports. And even worse, a lot of these jobs are never coming back.
A record 20.5 million Americans lost their jobs last month and the unemployment rate surged to 14.7%. It was the largest and most sudden rise in joblessness since the government started tracking the numbers.
A lot of people still seem to think at some point, Donald Trump will flip a switch and the government will start humming again. As Peter Schiff explained in his podcast Friday that’s not going to happen. The best we can hope for is recovering from a depression to the recession we were going to have anyway.
While impeachment proceedings kicked off at home President Trump was in Davos, Switzerland, talking up the US economy. He called it the best economy in American history. Is it though? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey talks about the economy, what’s really driving it, and why this might be a good time to think about gold.
Friday’s employment report from the Labor Department far exceeded expectations. Mainstream analysts called the report “stellar.” Some pundits even called it the best jobs report in history. According to the Labor Department, the US economy added 266,000 jobs in November. Economists had projected an increase of around 187,000. The unemployment figure dropped to 3.5%.
Peter Schiff talked about it in his latest podcast. He called it a “Trumped-up” jobs report.
Last week, we got bad news in the manufacturing sector. The ISM index of national factory activity dropped to a 10-year low. It was the second straight month the number was below 50, which indicates a contraction in manufacturing. That news sent stock markets into a tailspin. This was followed up by a very week service sector report the following day.
In his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff said the service sector is about to follow manufacturing into recession. He also talked about the recent employment numbers and explained how the Fed is acting like a Soviet Politburo.
