During the week, 1.32 million newly-out-of-work people filed for state or federal unemployment insurance. A huge number of job losses. But more people returned to work.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The number of people who continued to claim unemployment insurance under all state and federal unemployment programs, after having risen in the prior week, fell by 3.07 million to 28.26 million (not seasonally adjusted), the first reading below 30 million since June, as both, continued claims under state programs and continued claims under the federal programs provided by the CARES Act declined, according to data released by the Department of Labor this morning. This was the lowest – least catastrophic – reading since June 13:
Blue columns:
A still enormous number of people – 15.2 million – continued claiming unemployment insurance under regular state programs, “not seasonally adjusted,” but this was down by about 625,000 from the prior week and continued the fairly consistent downtrend that had started in May.
Red columns:
This is where the big move took place. The number of people who continued claiming unemployment insurance under all federal and other programs – after having jumped by 1.5 million in the prior week – fell by 2.44 million to 13.05 million, the lowest since June 20. The decline was driven by a massive plunge in continued claims under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program that covers gig workers.
PUA: The number of people who continued claiming unemployment insurance under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program – contract workers, self-employed workers, “gig” workers, ranging from coders to drivers – fell by 2.23-million, to 10.72 million.
PEUC: But the number of people claiming continued benefits under the federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) rose by 67,000 to 1.22 million.
Extended Benefits: Nearly doubled to 125,659. This covers workers who have exhausted regular unemployment insurance benefits during periods of high unemployment. It provides up to 13 additional weeks of benefits when a State is experiencing high unemployment, and up to 20 weeks in some states. This category will balloon as the unemployment crisis drags on and people who still haven’t found a job fall off the regular unemployment rolls.
STC / Workshare: ticked up to 451,485 continued claims. These state programs “allow an individual who is employed for a portion of the week to collect UC. Under STC, an employer elects to avoid layoffs by reducing the number of regularly scheduled hours of work for all, or a group of, individuals during disruptions to a firm’s regular business activity….” STC “provides individuals a pro-rata share of weekly benefits based on the reduction in weekly hours of work.”
Federal Employees: ticked down to 15,061 continued claims.
Newly Discharged Veterans: ticked down to 14,225 continued claims.
Newly out of work: Initial Claims, state & federal:
Initial claims under state programs, filed by newly laid off people who’d been regular employees, though still catastrophically high during the week, were on a “not seasonally adjusted” basis below the 1-million mark for the second week in a row, at 831,856, down from 988,309 last week, “not seasonally adjusted.”
Initial claims are now for the first time below the catastrophic peak of the Great Recession in January 2009 (956,791 initial claims, not seasonally adjusted). So they’re still catastrophically bad, but a lot less catastrophically bad than they were a few weeks ago.
Initial claims under the federal PUA program for contract workers fell to 488,622 (not seasonally adjusted), from 655,999 in the prior week.
Both state and federal initial claims combined: 1.32 million people who newly lost their work and filed for unemployment compensation. This is still a huge influx of newly out-of-work people into the pool of the unemployed. At this rate, this amounts to about 6 million people a month losing their work and filing for unemployment insurance.
What it boils down to.
There is still a huge number of people losing their work every week. But that number is coming down. And there are now more people getting hired back or finding new jobs than are losing jobs, and the overall number of people still on the unemployment rolls has declined. So it appears that the peak of the unemployment crisis is finally behind.
People can only claim unemployment insurance under a state program or under a federal program, but not under both. The claims are processed by the same state unemployment office, and this makes double-dipping less likely.
But data chaos persists. Reports are everywhere of under-reporting and over-reporting, of fraudulent claims and of claims that have been hung up for weeks or even months and still haven’t been processed for one reason or another. There are reports of still understaffed unemployment offices that cannot handle the inflow, especially with the limitations of working in an office environment during the Pandemic, with many workers having been switched to working from home, which entailed a whole set of new problems, including technical issues.
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I wonder what the number is of those that UI has run out and still aren’t employed?
jo6pac,
Some of them (most/all?) are covered by “Extended Benefits” which doubled. Look at around 1/3 down the article.
Thanks
So the Atlanta Fed reading is probably credible. This is going to be a huge quarter GDP increase wise?
MonkeyBusiness,
What this report says is that there are still 28 million people on unemployment rolls. Which is HUGE. That’s an unemployment rate of about 17.5% of the labor force.
The Atlanta GDPNow is all over the place, especially early on in the quarter when there is very little Q3 data yet. So “correct” does not apply. We know that the low point was in Q2 and that GDP will rise from there. But it will take a long time before it gets back to where it was in 2019.
Also, much depends on the new stimulus that hasn’t passed yet. If it doesn’t show up, and consumers, companies, and states don’t get $3 trillion to blow, as they did last time, you can expect some negatives creep back into the data.
They won’t get 3 trillion, but 1.5 seems like a possibility. Seems like we are still experiencing delayed feedback from the last stimulus i.e. it took almost 5 months plus some reopening to get to this point.
Another possibility is that a “compromise” amount will be chosen somewhere in-between 1.5 and 3 trillion. Could be something like 2 to 2.25ish trillion. Overall, I would guess that a “compromise” number could be the most likely scenario.
A big looming reason why more than 1.5 trillion could happen is that, if congress can’t decide quickly on the next stimulus. The news on how many businesses are doomed to fail, based on the current money coming in, will eventually come out. I could easily imagine there being 2 or more upcoming stimulus bills this year “that pass”. If a “Only” 1.5 trillion stimulus does happen, I would expect another stimulus, within a couple months-ish (overall at that point, I would guess then counting the 1.5 trillion stimulus that there would be 3 or 4 upcoming stimulus bills that pass this year).
There are a lot of businesses that reopened their doors, but, that business hasn’t flown back in. Restaurants especially, I get that they don’t want diners inside, but, takeout won’t sustain most restaurants. There are a lot of misc. businesses that won’t survive with the employees working from home or inside the office with door locked. Survival of fittest is currently in overdrive for all businesses in America. How hard congress decides to try to keep these bushiness open, will decide alot of stimulus money. That retail apocalypse has turned into the small and medium business apocalypse that threatens to turn Main Street Red.
$3t or $1.5t, it wont matter, none of it will make up for the pull back in lending in banks, the derivatives on top of it that require constant increases in lending and collateral that would have been generated in actually economic activity.
Negatives, like a renewed Covid outbreak because there is no real mitigation plan before an election?
regards
Covid is irrelevant. Demand is not there. Labor always lags.
I am actually surprised the PEUC claims are not higher, as most unemployment claims that started in March or April (in the millions) will have exhausted the state or PUA claims benefits by now. I don’t think that most of them have gone back to work. Something is off..either those extended claims are being denied or held up.
Under 30 Million. Finally some improvement.
Also, Apple market cap is only 1% shy of $2 Trillion.
Apple is doing a bond offering to buy its own stock some more. The Fed, Warren Buffet, etc will buy a ton as part of Making America’s Income Inequality Higher.
Agree, Fed’s BFF Warren is pretty set. Wish they could do more for younger generation though, like Bezos, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Satya Nadella etc.
“The only thing worse than being a slave to capitalism is not being a slave to capitalism?”
Why can’t bankruptcy be declared & the slate wiped clean ??
The world has not shrugged off the effects of the 2008 GFC yet, where a structural overhaul of the global economic systems was warranted.
Instead of a budget in surplus, as was promised after 2008, Australia is now ever so much further in debt.
So .. if a restructure of the economic system is not palatable, why can the system not be changed to embrace the up & down free-for-all that is the financial reality .. ad-hock spending .. frivolous squandering & outright stupid investment ??
How many more times can we the people be thrown over the cliff side before we are rendered unable to be revived ??
Bankruptcy would start it all up again & keep it all going, it’s not what we are used to but we adapt so easily.
Very quickly:
Ugly truth .. Look who’s in charge or the nations purse strings:
Is that the political arena are no good at saving & providing for themselves into retirement. They rely on the “lucrative pension off money” they are entitled to.
Former Premier of Victoria, AU. Joan Kirner was not eligible for that retirement money & struggled to get by & many more politicians struggle to get by even with their retirement allowance.
And the list of, not only politicians, but prominent persons post a job that are left struggling is long.
While the stringent expectations on us .. the low are unyielding.
The Clinton’s .. we all know they were broke ..
It is said that they had to go with a begging bowl to the US government to finance the wedding of their only daughter.
The shame of it.
PM John Howard is said to be Australia’s most wasteful PM ever.
Thank You.
I had occasion to inform my Local Federal Member of Parliament, Mr. Peter Khalil .. that the Victorian government was in the habit of ..
GIVING AWAY PRIME STATE OWNED REAL ESTATE ..
to .. the medical profession/legal/teaching/business & the list goes on alarmingly.
Eg,. a 2 story house in Albert St East Melbourne .. value .. $2.000.000 today.
FOR FREE ..
And .. this particulate home has been for 50 years & still is in the unlawful procession of an Associate Professor of the media profession .. who has earned squillions & frittered them away as easily as she has earned them.
“Have I no pity” ?? Frankly NO.
I suggested that the Victorian government lawfully take back the property of Victoria & its people .. PRIME REAL ESTATE worth billions .. to finance the repayment of exorbitant debts incurred ..
Instead of BLEEDING once again its citizens.
1st chart, 28.3 million claims, not $.
Thank you for the analysis that brilliantly accompanies your humor.
Sheesh!! Thanks.
The most disgusting unemployment story of the week comes out of New Orleans. Regarding the new $400 extended benefit the feds are offering, which is a 25% state and 75% federal split.
The federal govt is willing to allow the $100 contribution from the states to be part of the state unemployment benefit workers are already receiving. But in the state of Louisiana tens of thousands of unemployed workers don’t even receive $100 in unemployment. They would be ineligible for the federal $300 extended benefit.
Almost half the jobs lost in NOLA are leisure and hospitality – https://www.bls.gov/regions/southwest/summary/blssummary_neworleans.pdf.
Tens of thousands of those jobs won’t be back without a vaccine.
Is that the definite plan? Or is this an executive order that may happen?
I thought the Democrats would fight that pretty hard, given their position is the states are already in a big hole from fighting the virus.
And, in a different world, say 1980 or 1990 or even 2000, I would have expected the whole of Congress to be in an uproar because the Executive is snatching the power of the purse . . .
My estimate is 70% of people on UE would be working were it not for the $600 (nor $400) federal benefits.
There is now some discussion that the disappearance of the $600 caused people to not bother filing initial claims last week in states where they would have gotten just a pittance. I’m not sure what I think about this, but if you get, as we heard on the radio, $15 a week in state UI, and the $600 ends, then it’s probably not worth the hassle. I can see that. But I don’t know how widespread this would be. If this turns out to be true, and the $400 becomes reality (Labor Department sent instructions to the states, so it seems this going to be reality), then we should see an increase in initial claims next week or two – that would sort of support that theory.
$15 a week? Did you mean to say $150?
I know benefits are tired to income, so the more you earn the more you make. But even so I can’t imagine any state going as low as $15/week. As far as I know the formula is X% of your previous income with a min and max. So even for a minimum wage job which pays $300/week, the minimum would be at least 1/2 of that.
I was unemployed once upon a time in 2010. Kind of a voluntary thing. I sort of asked to be laid off as I wanted to take some time off. And my employer at the time obliged. Keep in mind this was 10 years ago and my weekly benefit was somewhere around $550 which was my state’s maximum at the time. Adjusted for inflation that’s around $700 in 2020 dollars. I stayed on it for 6 weeks or so, while “looking
for a job. And the “looking” part was a complete joke. All I had to do was apply to 3 jobs a week. So I’d go to Monster (remember that place) and randomly apply to 3 posts, and that satisfy the requirement. 100% legit. I could have done that for 2 years, since at the time the benefits were extended to 99 weeks.
The whole thing is a scam.
Working where exactly ???
Just Some Random Guy,
It’s important to note that a lot of businesses had reduced demand from about mid-march onwards, the people who “lost their job” to take advantage of the $600 extra a week, prevented many businesses from having to fire people or giving many of their employees greatly reduced hours.
So it’s the 70% is possible (probably a little lower), but, if the “I want the $600 a week crowd”, hadn’t taken advantage of it, there would have been more actual layoffs.
The jobs those people are in are from businesses, much more likely to go OB in the coming months. It’s also important to note that many businesses were already giving greatly reduced hours before many employees “volunteered” to be lay-offed. Many businesses are still in contact with those employees in-case business does pick back-up after the extra unemployment money ends.
Hmm, 31M-28M in 3mos is 10%. A return to 2M, it would take 27 months. However the Federal claims are much larger relative to “the good times..” so they should shrink faster, if you only consider the State claims, 22M-16M, a return to 2M would only take 9 months after Federal claims catch up with State. If half of the the workforce has to retrain out of the service industry, and young people are getting COVID faster than older people. The job market could get pretty tight much quicker. Depends on how much regulation we slap on industry, and who wants to work for a sub living wage, and die doing it.
I don’t see that possible. Growth is slowing to 0.
If the new normal is 5M we should get there faster. Return of manufacturing jobs may pivot around the election. Jobs arrive around inauguration. We could be sub 2M by next year sometime. If their purpose is to restore the financial economy they had before the crisis, booyah.
We put all of our crew on UI back in April into May, then put everyone back to work through PPP and additional work. Things spiked in San Diego so we put everyone back on UI at end of July and are bringing crew back on next week. I’m afraid this will be the cycle for a while depending on localized spikes and availability of work.
No way are we going back to “good times” unemployment levels for a long while. Many business simply aren’t coming back and low skilled/uneducated employees are doomed for the foreseeable future. The vacuum of those missing business will eventually fill, but it’ll take a while.
Question, if you don’t certify a weekly claim or report sufficient income to UI and it generates a $0 payout for the week does that make that week’s cert not count as a “continuing claim”?
The reason I bring this up is my personal situation. I’m a “one man” self employed individual therefore eligible for PUA and PPP. There are many folks like me out there who have been receiving the $600 extra and I have been cautiously waiting for the right moment to apply for a PPP loan.
The week that the extra $600 ended I had my PPP loan approved and it worked out really well for me. I switched right over the exact week the federal UI boost was cut back and am now paying myself the full PPP amount $20,833 over the next 10 weeks. I am reporting $2,083 to UI and it generates a $0 payout. Am I technically not counted as a continuing claim?
There are a lot of threads on reddit that I’ve seen where people in my situation are doing the exact same thing, but in some states they have you just completely skip a weekly certification. Do they count as a continuing claim if they skip a week? I would imagine not.
No one knows the answer to how receiving PPP and PUA will be handled for the self employed but there are ways people are going about it to collect both, but just not at the same time and avoiding the dreaded double dip. I am cutting checks from my business account to a personal checking account to document the flow of PPP funds over 10 weeks (2.5 months worth due to how PPP is calculated). I report that weekly “payroll” as self employed income to UI and am not getting any UI money as to not double dip from both programs.
When the 10 weeks of PPP run out there are plenty of people that will just switch back to PUA and continue certifying weekly claims after all their PPP money is exhausted. I’ve talked to a few accountants from different states and this is how they are advising their clients as well.
There is no clear guidance from the SBA, IRS or any state government regarding this and I have seen many forums where people are doing just what I outlined above.
Could this be causing a drop in continued claims because a lot of PUA folks timed their PPP loans like I did? If you go to reddit over the last 2 weeks it appears there was a MAD scramble of people trying to get PPP before the August 8th deadline. They were all trying to do just as I did and “jump ship” from PUA to PPP just as the extra $600 was ending.
My plan is to hopefully get a 2nd round of PPP and not switch back to PUA, but my industry (live corporate events/meetings) has had its entire grid shut off by economic lockdowns.
It’s the Wild West of experimental accounting and it seems that there are many people with a Billy the Kid sized risk appetite.
Should be interesting to see how they move the goalposts regarding collecting both PPP and PUA for the self employed. As of now the goalposts are invisible.
What industry is your business in?
I work in the live events industry. Not concerts or trade shows, but think business meetings and huge conferences. Moscone center is a frequent venue that I work as well as similar sized venues across the country. I’m a graphics operator and take the live presentation graphics to screen for the C-Level execs of companies like Google, Apple, IBM, The New York Times, Business Insider, T-Mobile, AT&T, Vogue Magazine, Gucci, and many more. Sometimes this involves working at their corporate HQs for a week or two before the show to craft the messaging that goes on screen for their presentations. Lots of rehearsals. Then during the show I’m in charge of running about 8 MacBooks that take this content to all the screens for audiences up to 15k. Some work is international but for the most part I work all across the nation.
It’s intense stuff and I love it!
There are hundreds of thousands of backstage crew like myself just waiting to get back into the biz. We are all freelancers and have our own LLCs. And we are all on PUA and PPP right now. All of us.
We’re a much overlooked industry in the midst of this gov’t imposed shutdown.
I also produce the graphic/video assets ahead of time so for me there will still be work for the stop-gap “virtual events” until the ban on humans is over but my heart goes out to all the stage managers, show callers, lighting directors, camera operators, stagehands, projectionists, LED techs and audio engineers who are effectively sidelined until we snap out of this collective national fear. Those roles only exist on a live show. And they are all cancelled for a long long time.
There is a bill in congress called the RESTART ACT. It’s specifically targeted to our industry. Have a look – it outlines the scope of how bad we’ve been hit.
There is also a new group called the live events coalition that is lobbying Congress to recognize our unique situation as an industry.
I work with some extremely talented and smart folks but we are all freelancers and this is the first time there has been a collective voice that represents us all. It’s inspiring but I wonder if it will make any impact.
Our entire grid is down for now but it will return eventually.
KamikazeShaman,
Thanks. I sort of remembered your business situation from your prior comments. So thanks for the additional details. I can tell from your comment above that you spent a lot of time researching the PPP situation. I hope it works out for you.
My question was for “The Bob who cried Wolf” but I forgot to add his name. Apologies.
“…this is the first time there has been a collective voice that represents us all.” NOT. Ever heard of the IATSE or are you a non-union scab?
PUA/PPP is running out. That will drop significantly until October first.
Actually, I think it’s likely the numbers get worse as the decimation of retail/restaurants/bars/hospitality/travel spills over into the rest of the economy.
Yup, claims lag. Reopening should finish up in August with a 300-500 increase in private sector NFP. Down to 0 in September. Claims are lagging and in this case, lagging by quite a lot. I suspect the general downward progression should go into early September, then stop.
You’re more optimistic than I am. As businesses close, the money they spent on other services/goods drops too. But it doesn’t hit right away.
I am just hoping for a stall with a small bump this fall/winter. I suspect some of those white collars and especially ones in trading houses could get the pink slip. They may make equity markets have a bit less confidence sic sic
Anyone who thinks this the peak unemploment is delusional, that the worse has past, fact is to many claim are deiberatly delayed, to many get denied, to many drop off for refusing to rick their lives to work, to many corrupted figures in the run up to the election some are desperate to win, will do anything to make things look better than they are, the income loss as a hit to the economy is so vast anyone thinking about recovery will be mentally scard. This is a depression, evictions are just about to start, no debt payment have been paid for months, on all forms of debt, bond yields are starting to spike as a message to those who think QE is infinate, the Dollar is under attack to keep markets high, this hyper bubble is about to blow, the Dollar will spike to 110 (DXY), yields will go negative even on the 30yr, property prices will collapse, wait & see how this is mearly the start of a horrific, it will make 2008 look like a trivial matter, the Fed will come in like a recking ball will more QE & make it even worse. People will think it’s armogedeon believe :/
Dollar looks like it wants to start spiking northward. The smell of money destruction in the air(heavily brought on by banks ramming down debt).
Bobby, Bobby, Bobby,
Lets get real. Demand is not coming back. We are in a deflationary crash that will take us back to 1995, prices will then meet demand/ wages. Fed is powerless to stop it.
Too much debt. Had a chance in 2000 and 2008 to clear that out. Instead we blew more debt bubbles. Wages are stagnant.
Here is what is going to happen after Nov 3rd. The REAL layoffs will start. Boeing, the only real manufacturer who used to export anything will run out of the 25bil it took out of the bond market. They have three planes that nobody wants. 100k of the last union jobs in the country, gone. Seattle will be like Detroit soon
Follow Boeing not Amazon. That will tell you the future.
The next Detroit is Chicago. Chicago is on the verge of losing its commodity exchanges because these are just racks of computers which can be anywhere.
@Petunia – Chicago lost most of it’s exchanges years ago, “mergers” I believe. The pits at the CBT permanently closed the visitor gallery after 9/11 in 2001. Open outcry is effectively gone.
It will go through the roof, this corruption makes me so angry look at all the errors I made in my comment, and I ain’t even American :)
I tend to agree that it’s all getting papered over. Plus stock market was already right at record high market cap/to GDP and now the GDP denominator has shrunk and will take a few years to get back to where it was. The only way to make that work out is to keep changing the number of inches in a yardstick if you know what mean.
Does anyone think it’s mere coincidence that unemployment ticked down after the $600/week federal aid stopped?
In what what way?? As in people returned to work cuz the $600 was an incentice to not work? Or are you suggesting corruption to make it look that way, the fact is for 21 weeks I think claims were from close to 7 million to 1.5 million, how does that result in an employemnt rate of 10.2%, these numbers are totally corrupt, I believe the rate is easy 25%, doesn’t matter though, what matters is money, the amount of money not being earnt is vast, they can say unemployment is 5% who cares, the lost earnings will reveal itself in a collapsed economy, by the way they should never have given 600 a week, that’s insanity, 600 a week & don’t need to pay bills, imagine the fake effect that had in the numbers, deliberate to show improvement to goose the markets till election, all that will come off in a cliff drop, the carnage to come will be huge, I think it will take far more than a decade to recoup the loss, 50-50 it may never come back at all, remember the growth over the last 20 years was hyper debt & ain’t no way people can take on more, they can’t even pay what they owe. :/
I would indeed argue that $600/week is incentive to seek unemployment. And now that the easy money has come to a stop, perhaps temporarily, there’s less motivation to file for unemployment if there’s a job waiting for those who’ve been staying away from the labor force.
Sure to a degree I agree, but not as much as people assume, a small fraction, I just do not believe for one second the numbers released are anywhere near the true unemployment, I also do not believe there are jobs to go to, remember unemployment ends as soon as an employer decides staff should return, regardless of whether they want to or not, I do believe the number are fake & people are being removed from claims for many reasons, then add unprocessed claims of people waiting since March, in other words the rate of unemployment is 25% & the stats are totally corrupt. Sure people would prefer not work for 600 a week, what mug wouldn’t, I think it’s a false narrative though, cuz they wouldn’t be entiltled in the first place to claim if they were recalled, it was a policy designed to goose the numbers to boost stocks so they can exit the stock market, as soon as they sold out they started to argue and delivered nothing. All in all what ya believe is true but to a very small degree when all the facts are considered, that’s my thesis anyway. :)
I haven’t been seeing a bunch of “Help Wanted” signs here in Texas. Without that, where would all of these people suddenly interested in employment find it?
All of my friends and acquaintances in the entertainment and food service businesses remain out of work. I know two families who have moved in with the grandparents and they are not young parents themselves.
They couldn’t keep paying their rent without work.
Again the New Orleans news is instructive in how people were pushed out of unemployment by the state. When the $600 benefit ended, so did the deferment of looking for work.
In Louisiana, the unemployed were notified by tweet that they would have to include 3 job searches on the next claim. Many did not know the deferment had ended and were disqualified in last week’s claim, because they did not have the 3 job searches.
This alone probably cut the unemployment claims in the state significantly and is an example of how the fraud is really done by the state against workers. Nobody asked to be put on the unemployment line, the govt did that.
Does anyone know what will happen to the teachers when school does not commence in the fall?
Do they still get paid?
I think they would unless told to work or lose pay, I assume they get paid by the state & ya not talking about unemployment, if ya talking unemployment they will not get paid, like I said above, this is turning out to be a tool to blackmail people into going to work or losing it all, this is why the Republicans want to change the law to remove the ability to sue if employees sue for exposure to the virus :/
Correction, they should get paid, you did say that if schools do no commence, they should get paid, why wouldn’t they, the chances though is they will be forced to work, only if they refuse they rrisk losing pay & not being able to claim unemployment. As soon as a school opens it will close days later when a virus case surfaces though, that I can tell you :)
Robert,
3 in family and 3 neighbors/friends have gone back to work, in a combination of in classroom and on line, depending on which state they work in and what grade they teach… word is that all are on pay roll, as they have been before this virus, some 9 months, some 12 months…
Also hear that some places are fully remote, some are giving parents choices,,, that is only 4 county school districts though out of the 3k+ or so.
Bil says he prefers to be in class with proper PPE,,, others not so sure…
The real problem is the virus and everything else follows, either good or bad. Where I live (BC) school is going back full time in person with a two day delay for teachers and staff to organise their systems and safety procedures. Usually, teachers come in for several days to a week during the summer, on their own time, to prepare ahead of time for a seamless start. However, these days schools have been closed and locked and staff had to turn in their keys in June so that was not possible. Hence, the delayed start.
Our Govt has also hired an extra five hundred contact tracers and will have them trained up before school starts. With the virus under control full contract tracing is possible. Contact tracers are usually retired nursing staff. Those folks in contact with infected people have to quarantine for 14 days, no ifs ands or buts. They have also purchased millions of masks for students and staff, and mask wearing at school is mandatory. Sports? Not even mentioned because it is not likely to happen. School is for learning and not for pro sport athlete development, making money for an institurion, or operating as a betting platform.
Leadership and priorities. Day cares for working families have been open this summer, and after school care will be available when school starts.
There is an insinuation in some of the above comments that if schools are closed teachers will be able to sit around and collect a pay cheque. The opposite is true. Remote learning and hybrids require a reset and is a nightmare to operate for teachers as parents have continuous access and expect immediate feedback. In class schooling is better for everyone for sure.
regards
Many schools (k-12) will face a percentage cut, if all the classes are online, and not offered on campus. So, it figures this will filter down to teachers pay. Many colleges are charging extra per class that are online, and not on campus. So, It figures this will filter UP to instructor pay.
It is illegal in most jurisdictions to simply break a contract to save money. You can lay staff off if they are not needed, but you cannot expect the same work from staff for less money if there is a contract in place. As I mentioned above, online learning does not mean less work for teachers. It is just different.
In your example you cited more pay for online instructors. If that is the case it is probably because there is simply more work. College instructors are at the bottom of the food chain for employment and this includes K-12. There is a reason why sessional instructors often work at many different facilities. They are paid by the class per semester, with no benefits. Piece work in action. And yes, I have relatives who teach at some prestigious US universities as associate professors. Their jobs suck, to be honest.
regards
Actually, the pay rate structure for the percentage of online verses on campus IS in the contracts.
Paulo,
I think that you’re confusing associates with adjuncts. Associates are on annual or longer contracts while adjuncts do the per semester or per class grunt work.
Been there, done that.
Just consider teaching as an adjunct is charity work. Pay may cover expenses. You can’t live on it. Did it for two years. Sucks.
DEL,
I think that the real existential challenge to public school is the fact that many parents this past spring learned that they can competently teach their children at home. Our local district sent all kids, K-12, home for the spring term and provided both paper and live classroom material. Parents were able to actively participate in helping to educate their kids. They found out that they could do homeschooling effectively and in a meaningful way.
There is so much quality homeschool curricula out there for parents. I was a public high school teacher for many years and when homeschooled kids did come (or return) to the public schools — now high schoolers — they tended to be very well educated. There were some exceptions, but normally homeschooled kids were very successful transitioning to regular school.
This fall our local district plans on instituting a ‘level yellow’ school week — two days live at school (rotating basis) and three at home with take-home material and online. My daughter is considering just keeping my three grandkids home, as she is able to be a stay-at-home mom. The school district will provide the curricula.
Amazing. We might see a big shift in the US toward homeschooling, at least in the immediate future.
Definitely pro-homeschooling, if it can be scheduled in at home.
It really just depends. In my rural area the education that home schooled kids have is just abysmal. The literacy rate is not good. Maybe the programs have good material but the implementation of it isn’t always so good.
Not that any of the parents would ever admit it..
Must agree with rural-given America’s traditional anti-intellectualism as documented from deTocqueville’s time, it’s not a good generalization re: home schooling. In recent times, if one observes the fruits of our mass-entertainment ‘industry’, public education is the ‘common’ experience that is then constantly slagged and shorted on resources by much of the population, and, indeed, is too-often viewed as little more than state-sponsored child-care where kids can be parked while the parents go to work. The acquisition of a broad, life improving, education is, at best, a happy secondary result . Little wonder that a number of parents who realize this and have the chops choose to home-school, but that number is far from universal ( the oft-read disdain for the ‘common’ population found among would seem to confirm that widespread home-schooling will have a difficult path forward unless there is a parent who has the ability to stay home AND the aforementioned education/lifelong learning chops to go with it…).
May we all find a better day.
Ack-typos will kill me, yet. Sentence should have “…as (found) (among) more than a few commenters, here…” should be inserted after “…’common population’…
Apologies, and, again, a better day to all.
They will work remotely and get paid by their contract. Just like all the other workers that have transitioned to remote work. Why is this even a question?
Remote teaching is way more work than classroom teaching. The number of communications increases 3-4 times. In classroom teaching you really are communicating daily with the outliers. In remote learning you have to communicate with everyone all the time.
Plus you get the bonus of having some parents watch every single move you make and debate you about how you are doing your job. Imagine if you are a white collar worker and your customer was watching every move you make.
Thanks for admitting that many teachers pick out a few favorite students and then ignore the rest, to make their job easier. Something I remember so well from school, and why I forced myself to sit in the front row and speak up. Yes, I got called names but that’s the price you pay for wanting to make use of all that time in the classroom. I did feel sorry for all the kids who, for one reason or another, were too shy or intimidated to sit in the front row, raise their hands, and ask questions. For some strange reason, this sad phenomenon was more prevalent in college, especially in the public two-year colleges I attended, with lots of minority students. And yeah, I was once told, by a prof no less, that I was being aggressive because I was white and felt privileged to speak up, and so it was my fault that the other students felt intimidated. That’s the day I realized where higher education was going.
I never said that.. you read into what I said from your prior experience.
Ever hear of the 80/20 rule? The active students take the least amount of work. It’s the ones that need the help that take all your efforts.
When I say communicating.. I mean phone calls and emails home. Meetings with parents. Those are not for the students that are taking care of their own education ( like you admitted to do for yourself).
I wish you well in your future endeavors.
They will get paid in Michigan. And for the most part will be at their homes. Again. Medical staffs and hospitals with front line workers experienced layoffs and pay cuts. Some were fired. Hospitals had huge financial losses.
Teachers had full pay and were furloughed one day a week to game the system get the $600 dollar UE. Most of the emergency covid money is going into the 2021 education budget. Over 500 school districts with and their $125k per year administrators will be home again. Even bus drivers were kept on and fired up the bus inventory to make bus parades for children’s birthdays. The people of Michigan brought this on themselves with the election of Gretchen Whitmer (D-School Employees.)
Does anyone see employment improvement going into the 4th quarter? What, part-time Christmas jobs at remaining dying brick and mortars? Summer was probably the peak in job numbers for the 2020 year especially. Perhaps Congress is also waiting to see if people are actually willing or forced out to find a job?
In any case, we know now we’re probably going to have to push on with the COVID around for a good while. We might as well come to terms with the situation and build a business economy around it the best we can. Just deal with it, like it or not.
Private tutor. I have a client who fled the peaceful protests & logo shoppers. Took early retirement and will be home schooling for 3 families.
Yesterday unemployment data was released for OZ……….won’t bother with the figures as they are all fake and no way anywhere near the real numbers.
This is an example:
Some 160,000 people or so worked zero hours during the month. They were paid under some such arrangement or plan………………
They were of course counted as employed.
OZ is one of the unofficial “states” of America.
Of course they had to borrow best practices from the BLS.
Lee,
We (Nick) did a whole article on this scheme in Europe the other day. Some 40 million people on furlough in the five big economies, but paid via government subsidies, and therefore not counted as unemployed. Unemployment rates have barely budged. We included some charts. I’m OK with this furlough method, but good grief, this method of accounting for unemployment is even crazier than our USian methods :-]
Yes, there are programs here in Australia going on that pay businesses to keep people employed and unemployment top ups as well.
There was a whole bunch of data on the numbers of hours actually worked as well and I couldn’t really figure out what the numbers meant other than a whole bunch of people were classified as employed even though they were ‘working’ anywhere from 1 hour per week up to believe it or not 60 hours per week.
From what I COULD figure out, it appears that there is a huge amount of people not working a lot of normal hours.
One of the interesting factors that has messed up the numbers here is the huge movement of people in and out of the country as a result of the virus.
Lots of temp visa holders (including a lot of backpackers that pick fruit and vegetables) have left the country for a number of reasons such as when they lost their jobs, they lost their visa, people getting out while they could, and others moving back to their own country.
Basically if you are in Australia now you are stuck here.
Next you had a whole bunch of Australian expats coming back to the country for the above same reasons.
And then we have the education sector. Australia is a huge market for foreign students (read Chinese). Some were already in the country when the lockdown started, but many never came – several hundred thousand at least. Universities here are losing billions of dollars in revenue and cutting staff and teachers.
(Lots of lost income from rent, food, and all the associated things these students spent money on. These students would also work part time or casual jobs to their ‘legal’ limit at the ‘official’ wage and then work more hours off the books at a much reduced cash wage.)
As an aside, years ago when I was teaching I had a student from India who was studying English (his Ozzie English was even better than mine!!!). He ‘studied’ during the day and then worked as a night duty manager at some luxury hotel and actually made more per hour than I did. The scam was to to get a degree – any degree, apply for PR and then later bring over the family. As these pathways are now gone, future population increase in Australia through this method will be greatly reduced.
And then finally, normal immigration. Our population used to grow between 150,000 – 250,000 or so people each year as a result of immigration. GDP growth through population increase, but a fall in GDP per person!!!
Lots of these immigrants were wealthy. Wealthy enough to plonk down 7 figures of cash for a house, buy a couple of nice new mercs, or BMW’s, and send their kids to private schools. All the jobs being generated through this immigratiion are now gone as well.
So with all this going on, who knows what the real numbers are given the methodology currently being used to measure unemployment, but they sure aren’t what the government is reporting.
I’m fairly certain there is a problem. My wife was collecting PUA from NYS and payments of unemployment mysteriously ended when the $600 extra payment ended. When we log into the NYS DOL website it says she should still be receiving the regular unemployment portion but no payments have arrived. Unfortunately they are so busy that if you call the system hangs up on you. In addition to that I work for a financial institution on an analytical team and we’ve been tracking unemployment deposits. For the past 7 weeks the numbers have been very consistent. Then last week, the week you show as Aug 8th, we say a nearly 15% decline in the number of payments received. That would locally translate into well over 10,000 jobs and there has not been that kind of resurgence in employment. The money has just stopped being sent for some reason.
There’s a lot of fishy stuff going on with unemployment right now — people not getting through, not getting the money they applied for, the money disappearing, etc. I wouldn’t trust the headline numbers at all.
What recovery?
Manufacturers are not rehiring. The laid-off workers at the file cabinet, office furnishings, slot machine companies have not found new work. Flight attendants, airline caterers, bartenders, union-scale convention roadies, hotel housekeepers are starving.
The numbers are fake.
Interesting. Debt that can’t be repaid. Lots of it.
It will all show up as inflation in due course.
It’s going to be ugly.
Here’s some analysis of the labor situation in the world today:
Imagine you are a CEO and you have 100 employees in your firm.
The pandemic hits and you move your entire workforce to remote / work-from-home.
Studies show that productivity increases by about 30 percent on average when work gets shifted digitally like this.
Just by virtue of having employees skip their commute — which is around 30-45 minutes each way for the average American worker, and this figure has been rising steadily for the past 2 decades. Some commutes here in the San Francisco Bay Area can be has high as 2 hours each way, or longer — but those are the extreme cases.
This means that the average worker gains up to 10 hours per week — so imagine having 10 extra hours added to your work week! That’s a 25 percent increase in productivity time (based on a 40-hour work week), just by removing the commute.
Then, on top of that 25 percent increase, you’ve getting 30 percent more out of your workforce, based on the benefits of remote working and digital collaboration (assuming best practices in tools, technology, managerial attitude, etc.)
So that’s like hiring 30 additional workers for free!
So, as CEO, you’re sitting on this massive productivity goldmine from the pandemic. You’re able to increase output by 30 to 50 percent, or more.
Plus, you’ve eliminated the huge cost of all this office space you no longer need because you’re entire workforce is working remotely. Accountants say the cost of facilities is the largest percentage of the costs of goods sold, after costs of human employees.
No wonder business sentiments are running at all time highs in the midst of this pandemic. This situation makes things GREAT — that is, for you the CEO. Workers, not so much.
No wonder the stock market is going crazy.
When you’re getting 30 to 50 percent more from your 100-employee workforce, why should you hire more people?
I suspect demand for labor will remain “softened” rather significantly, for the foreseeable years — decades perhaps. Technology is only getting more powerful and adoption is only increasing and becoming more imperative in the competitive marketplace.
Thoughts? Ideas?