Seems that unemployment, or the threat of losing your job/work, has to be touching pretty much everyone at this point, even if just friends and family.
Personally, I think this is a watershed moment for large (and small business') Small businesses seem to be really struggling to stay afloat and can only bring back half the people if sales/activity stays down. Then large corporations are using this time as a means to totally restructure with a jobless recovery. Great for their bottom line and their stock, but 10s of millions of jobs never coming back.....?
What are we going to do about that?
Unemployment insurance forever? Maybe just call it UBI?
Unemployment claims top one million for the 13th straight week.
Businesses are reopening, but the layoffs won’t quit.
Another 1.5 million people applied for state unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday.
It was the 13th straight week that state filings topped one million. Until the coronavirus crisis, the most new claims in a single week had been 695,000, in 1982.
Claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program for self-employed workers, independent contractors and others ineligible for standard benefits, added 760,000 to the total.
“It’s a sustained hemorrhaging of jobs unlike anything we’ve seen,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
Economists said recent layoffs, though smaller than the wave in March and early April, suggested that the crisis was reaching deeper into the economy.
Hilton Worldwide, the hotel operator, said this week that it was eliminating 2,100 corporate jobs globally and would extend previous furloughs and cuts in hours and wages for 90 days. AT&T disclosed plans to shed 3,400 technician and clerical jobs nationwide and permanently close more than 250 stores, according to one of its unions. The gym chain 24 Hour Fitness said it was filing for bankruptcy protection and would permanently close more than 100 locations.