lost

“There’s a risk of a lost decade here”: former IMF advisor

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

The International Monetary Fund’s lowered outlook for the global economy is a “wake-up call” signaling the worst is not behind us, says former IMF adviser, Josh Lipsky.

”To imagine we can snap out it, just because pent-up demand has led to a surge in the last few months is naive thinking,” Lipsky told Yahoo Finance.

On Wednesday, the IMF lowered its forecast for the global economy, expecting a contraction of 4.9% for 2020. The forecast is a remarkable downgrade from the IMF’s -3% projection in April, making it the worst print in the report’s history.

For the first time, the IMF projects negative growth in every region of the world, as some areas re-open their economies and concerns of more coronavirus cases resurface.

“Even though countries are opening up, people are not spending … They’re saving more.” said Lipsky. “The fear factor, the rise in infections, all of that

… Read More

‘Major reallocation shock’ from coronavirus will see 42% of lost jobs evaporate, study says

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

Permanent job losses are likely to be a feature of the eventual U.S. recovery, according to University of Chicago research, which estimates that 42% of recently unemployed workers will not return to their jobs amid the “profound” shock stemming from coronavirus lockdowns.

The pandemic has taken a brutal toll on the world’s largest economy, with at least 36 million people thrown out of work over the last two months. With states gradually relaxing restrictions that have shut down businesses and locked workers at home, economists are forecasting at least some of those employers could rehire laid off workers. 

However, researchers at the U of C’s Becker Institute for Economics have painted a dour picture of the labor market reallocating those lost positions. Calling the crisis a “major reallocation shock” across all major economic sectors, the authors found that for every 10 coronavirus-induced job losses, only 3 were created.

Some employers

… Read More

Nearly 40% of households making under $40k have lost their jobs

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

The Federal Reserve says nearly 40% of people in households making under $40,000 a year lost their jobs in March, illustrating the damage the COVID-19 crisis has inflicted on low-income families.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell reported the data point during a webcast on Wednesday morning. The Fed will release more detailed data as part of its Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking due for release Thursday.

“The numbers show clearly that it’s more recent hires and lower paid people who are bearing the brunt of this, although people are suffering all across the income spectrum,” Powell said.

He noted the data is “particularly painful” within the context of the longest economic recovery in U.S. history, which came to an abrupt end with the novel coronavirus. Prior to the pandemic, the U.S. unemployment rate touched 50-year lows at 3.5%.

The Fed has been particularly interested on the distributive effects of the

… Read More

Over 9 million Americans lost health insurance amid coronavirus pandemic, analysis finds

By Tommy Flemm 2 years ago

The coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on the U.S, wreaking both economic health-related havoc on the American workforce.

In the four weeks leading up to April 11, the number of unemployment claims passed 22 million. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), that means that roughly 9.2 million workers likely lost their employer-sponsored health insurance during that time. 

“As people continue to lose their jobs, which we expect that they will do unfortunately, we’re going to see losses in health insurance coverage,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at EPI, told Yahoo Finance. “That’s because in the United States, we’ve chosen as a country, unfortunately, to tie access to health insurance with employment.”

He continued: “If we avoided that, if we made sure everybody was covered, everybody has access to health insurance regardless of their employment status, we wouldn’t be in this kind of predicament.”

An unprecedented number of

… Read More

‘We are going to see human lives lost’ if the coronavirus shutdowns continue

By Tommy Flemm 2 years ago

Sen. Ted Cruz warned in an interview on Friday that the U.S. will “see human lives lost” if the economic lockdown to contain the novel coronavirus outbreak lasts for months instead of weeks. “We are going to see real devastation from poverty to dreams shattered to family businesses put out of business,” the Texas Republican told Yahoo Finance.

Still, Cruz has pointed out in recent interviews that the ability to open is tied to a state’s capacity to contain the coronavirus. “No one in their right mind would suggest that New Yorkers should go back to work tomorrow,” Cruz said, referring to the nation’s epicenter of the crisis, where more than 12,000 people have died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

But, Cruz added, “There are parts of the country where the numbers are not nearly as bad.”

The states should implement plans to protect the

… Read More