Chuck Schumer Does Not Welcome Huge Drop in Unemployment
Chuck Schumer lashed out at Donald Trump on Friday after the president celebrated the sharp drop in the unemployment rate in August.
8.4% unemployment is nothing to brag about. https://t.co/2HPkedFLy5
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) September 4, 2020
The unemployment rate stood at 10.2 percent a month earlier, which means it dropped nearly 18 percent in a single month. To put it differently, the rate fell by 1.8 percentage points.
Senator Schumer, the New Yoirk Democrat and minority leader in the U.S. Senate, took a different stance in 2012, when he criticized Republicans for not celebrating a more modest decline in unemployment from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent. That three-tenths improvement, or 3.7 percent, was celebrated by Democrats after months of labor market stagnation.
“Republicans should welcome a lower unemployment rate, not curse it as an unwanted October surprise,” Schumer said in a statement.
US joblessness crisis worsens as
nearly 900,000 file
new unemployment claims
4 September 2020
New data
released by the US Department of Labor on Thursday showed that 881,000 jobless
workers filed new unemployment claims last week, exploding claims of an economy
in recovery as the worst job crisis in generations continues.
An
additional 759,000 people applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA),
which was created as part of the CARES Act for self-employed, contract,
freelance and so-called “gig” workers, an increase of roughly 150,000 from the
week before.
The total of
more than 1.6 million workers newly unemployed is more than double the worst
figure reported during the 2008-2009 financial crash.
Five weeks have passed since enhanced unemployment benefits enacted as part of the CARES Act were allowed to lapse by the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. The Republican-controlled Senate and the Democratic-controlled House were equally indifferent to the plight of tens of millions of workers cut off the $600-a-week supplementary federal benefit that had been added to their state unemployment compensation.
Nearly six
months after the passage of the CARES Act, the results are clear, according to
an analysis from Forbes that tracked 643 billionaires’
wealth from mid-March through early August. The group’s collective wealth
increased by over $685 billion, while at the same time in the US, nearly 30
million have lost their jobs, over 5.4 million have lost health care coverage,
an estimated one in seven US adults are now going without necessities, and
nearly 40 million people face eviction by the end of the year.
Since the
expiration of enhanced benefits, more than 5 million people have filed for
unemployment compensation. All told, some 60 million unemployment claims have
been filed in the US since mid-March, while an astounding 29.2 million workers,
nearly one in five workers, were receiving some kind of unemployment benefit
from the federal government and state governments in mid-August.
The scale of
the crisis is many times greater than any seen in living memory. At the height
of the Great Recession a decade ago, nearly 7 million people were collecting
unemployment benefits, which steadily declined to under 2 million by March
2020. In the last six months that number has more than quadrupled and remains
near 30 million, a figure that severely undercounts the number of actual
unemployed workers.
Thursday’s
new unemployment claims data mark only the second time in the last 22 weeks
that the Labor Department reported less than one million new claims. However,
the federal agency recently changed its methodology in reporting overall
jobless claims. In a press release, the department advised that it was
adjusting its seasonal calculations from using “multiplicative factors” to
“additive factors” that the department states will be more accurate “in the
presence of a large level shift in a time series.”
An August 8
memorandum signed by US President Donald Trump, dubbed the “Lost Wages
Assistance” program, called for distributing $300 in weekly federal
unemployment benefits on top of state benefits, to be drawn from a $44 billion
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) fund. This has yet to materialize
for millions of workers.
As of this
writing, 45 states have been approved by FEMA to begin distributing funds, but
only six so far—Arizona, Louisiana, Montana, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas—have
actually begun to do so. Dozens of states are unable to give a start date to
prospective beneficiaries. According to an estimate by the Century Foundation,
if all states and the District of Columbia were to participate in the program,
the FEMA fund would be exhausted in six weeks.
Further
pinching already tight purses is the fact that food prices continue to
increase, even as supply chain issues have largely been resolved. An August
report on the Consumer Price Index found that food prices had increased by 4.1
percent in 2020 compared to July 2019. Staple products such as eggs, ground
beef and milk have continued to increase in price, by as much as 10 percent,
even as farmers struggle to break even.
As
joblessness continues to rise, lines for food banks stretch for miles in US
cities. The continued jobless crisis, coupled with congressional inaction in
refusing to extend the $600 federal unemployment benefit at the end of July,
has exacerbated hunger in the US. Hunger has always been used to bludgeon the
poor and working class into accepting low-paying and dangerous work, even
during so-called “good times,” and is now being used to force workers,
including school teachers, back into classrooms and workplaces despite the
ongoing and unchecked spread of the coronavirus throughout the country.
In a report
in yesterday’s New York Times, Terry McNamara, 74, a grandfather
from Parma, a working class suburb outside of Cleveland, Ohio, succinctly
described the situation as “the Great Depression with minivans.” For McNamara,
his daughter and five grandchildren, the waiting in cars for hours to pick up
food from local food banks and charities has become a near-daily ritual.
Feeding
America, the largest network of food banks and pantries in the US, estimated
before the pandemic that a colossal 37 million people in the US, including 11
million children, were food insecure. Feeding America now estimates that over
54 million could face food insecurity in 2020, with up to 18 million of these
being children, for whom the lack of regular nourishing meals can have
debilitating effects on growth and healthy development.
In response
to a public outcry, the US Department of Agriculture reversed an earlier
decision that would have required parents to pay for a summer school lunch
program that started in March after schools were shut down. The extension,
however, is good only until December 31, after which the estimated 30 million
children who have been fed through the program will be cut off.
In Texas,
Brian Greene, CEO of the Houston Food Bank, spoke to ABC13 on the ongoing
demand for the group’s services.
“We’re
certainly helping at levels we never saw before. In the early months of this
pandemic, we were distributing at the rate of about a million pounds a day”
Greene said. “Right now, we’re doing about 800,000 pounds a day. That’s not
quite double where we were before the pandemic, but it’s still way above what
we’re used to.”
In Orlando,
Florida, where the unemployment rate was 15.3 percent in July, workers began
arriving at a food distribution point this past Saturday morning at 4 a.m. for
the chance to receive much needed groceries. After 4½ hours of waiting, the
line of cars stretched for over two miles, the longest it has been in the past
16 weeks. Speaking to the Orlando Sentinel, Nick Canturano,
a furloughed restaurant worker, remarked, “Every week it gets worse.”
Back in February, I reported to
you on the myth of the American worker shortage by spotlighting more than 50
stories of tens of thousands of recent U.S. worker layoffs in tech and other
high-skilled industries. MICHELLE MALKIN
AS THE U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE HANDS OUT
BRIBES TO DEMS FOR OPEN BORDERS: Remember these laid-off workers when Beltway
crapweasels come back from their Labor Day holiday to lobby for more imported
foreign farmworkers, work permits for illegal immigrant DREAMers, H-1B tech
visas, more foreign doctors and other medical professionals, Silicon Valley tax
breaks, and Fortune 500 bailouts. MICHELLE MALKIN
New Jersey Governor
Okays Work Licenses for Illegal Migrants
2 Sep 2020915
4:24
New
Jersey’s Democrat governor signed a bill on September 1 that allows illegal
migrants to take well-paying licensed jobs from Americans and legal immigrants,
even amid the dramatic recession that has pushed many Americans out of jobs.
NJ.com reported the
recession win for illegal migrants and employers on September 1:
Previously,
[people] were required to have a “lawful presence in the United States” to
qualify for a license. This law (S2455) removes that barrier.
[Gov. Chris] Murphy’s office said the law — which takes effect immediately —
will benefit about 500,000 undocumented residents in New Jersey.
The office also said the state will
be the first on the East Coast to enact such a law. California, Nevada, and New
Mexico are among the other states with similar statutes.
The law allows illegals — including
DACA recipients — to get licenses for many blue-collar and white-collar jobs.
The license will allow illegals to
work as electricians, plumbers, HVAC workers, lab technicians, nurses, doctors,
architects, and many other careers.
The law passed with support from
employers, many of whom are eager to cut their costs by staffing their
companies with the state’s large population of illegals, which include many
Latinos and a growing number of Indians.
In July, the
state’s unemployment rate hit almost 14 percent. “More than
1.5 million New Jersey workers have applied for unemployment benefits since the
pandemic began,” the New
Jersey Herald reported August
26.
“New Jersey
is stronger when everyone is given the opportunity to contribute and everyone
is given a chance to live their American Dream,” Murphy said in a
signing statement. He also declared the long-standing legal and cultural
distinctions between Americans and illegal migrants are shameful “discrimination”:
This law sends a simple, powerful
message that immigration status can no longer be used as an excuse to
discriminate among equally educated, trained, and qualified individuals. As we
look toward our shared economic future, we must ensure that no one is left
behind and everyone who puts forward the effort can succeed.
His political allies cheered the win
for illegal workers, even as New Jersey’s many American employees try to
recover from the coronavirus crash.
“This
legislation is a win-win for New Jersey workers and for employers looking to
hire workers with specific training and skills,” said Labor
Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo. “I’m proud to see our state leading the
nation in prioritizing the economic stability of all families.”
The law can also open new
opportunities for unscrupulous employers to skirt federal laws while using
illegal migrants as cheap labor. For example, foreign visitors are allowed to
enter and depart the country under the B-1/B-2 visa. They are not allowed to
work once they enter the country — but there are very few enforcement efforts
to deter the widespread hiring of B-1/B-2 visitors in licensed jobs needed by
skilled Americans.
Business
groups are pushing similar pro-illegal laws in many
states where millions of Americans have earned licenses for
skilled work. Many states also provide driver’s licenses to illegals, ao
helping them work illegally in a wider variety of jobs.
Democrats,
plus some Republicans, backed the pro-illegal legislation. Northjersey.com reported August
1:
Assemblyman Harold Wirths (R-Sussex)
voted no on the measure.
“We have rules and laws in this
country and, if you come into the country illegally and you are in violation of
the law, I don’t think we should be granting you licenses,” he said, noting it
was a way of circumventing federal laws.
The bill, though, is not opposed by
all Republicans in the state. Four Republican Senators voted in favor of the
bill. They included Senators Chris Brown (R-Atlantic), Declan O’Scanlon
(R-Monmouth), Kip Bateman (R-Somerset) and Gerry Cardinale
(R-Bergen).
There
was minimal media coverage of the
giveaway bill in the state’s few newspapers. The little
media coverage focused on the interests of illegal immigrants, not on Americans
and legal immigrants.
Progressives & biz groups are lobbying state legislatures to sneak
illegals into licensed jobs, ie electricians, therapists, nurses, HVAC, etc.
This would encourage more labor smuggling, and cut wages for the middle-class.
Like #H1B for
blue-collars. https://t.co/PKiqa9lHmV
— Neil Munro
(@NeilMunroDC) July 22,
2020
Michelle
Malkin: Plight of Laid-Off American Workers Nothing to Celebrate
By Michelle Malkin |
September 2, 2020
American workers across the wage scale are hurting.
Small-business owners across the country are fighting for their survival. Young
people face more uncertainty than ever about their futures and ability to put
food on the table.
As we head into Labor Day weekend, I
would like to offer a friendly reminder from the "America First"
right to the Beltway Republican message machine and the Trump campaign's social
media mavens: Now is not the time to be cheerleading for pandemic
profiteers, tech billionaires, and "woke capital" globalists who are
addicted to cheap foreign labor and abhor American sovereignty. According
to one analysis by Oxfam, 17 out of the top 25 most profitable U.S.
corporations — including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Facebook, Pfizer and
Visa — are projected to rake in $85 billion more in 2020 than in previous years
as upward of 40 million Americans are out of work.
SwampCons keep touting the "booming
stock market" and "record" S&P 500 highs. President Donald
Trump himself bragged last week, "NASDAQ has broken the record, I think 16
times already, during a pandemic." He also warned Republican National
Convention viewers that Joe Biden is bad for our "retirement" nest
eggs and "401(k)s." True enough. But what about the tens of
millions who've lost their jobs and those who haven't even had the chance to
start putting away any savings?
Moreover, why should any "Make
America Great Again" populists wave pom-poms for Microsoft, Apple, Amazon,
Google/Alphabet, and Facebook? The founders, top executives, and elitist
employees of these Silicon Valley firms — the top five companies in the NASDAQ
index — hate America, sabotage U.S. workers through advocating for mass
migration, Black Lives Matter and Antifa anarchy, and they openly
disparage and discriminate against Trump-supporting customers.
In ordinary times, I used to be one of
those reliable voices touting the "free market," "invisible
hand," and miracles of American capitalism over "socialism." But
our current condition is not one of "limited government conservatism"
vs. "big government socialism." As I've illustrated all summer long,
we live in a bloody state of anarchotyranny. The lawless reign while
big business collectively allies itself with the mob to reap profits at the
expense of the law-abiding.
Back in February, I reported to you on
the myth of the American worker shortage by spotlighting more than 50 stories
of tens of thousands of recent U.S. worker layoffs in tech and other
high-skilled industries. Among
the U.S. corporations and institutions responsible for laying off, replacing,
offshoring, and outsourcing tens of thousands of American jobs:
Wayfair, TripAdvisor, LogMeIn, Inc.,
Zume Pizza, VMWare, Shutterfly, Intel, Comcast, Xilinx, 23andMe,
NortonLifeLock, AT&T, Macy's, Walgreens, Uber, Lyft, UCSF Medical Center,
Baptist Health, Sysco, WeWork, American Family Insurance, Tennessee Valley
Authority, Amway, UPS subsidiary Coyote Logistics, Comcast, Lime, Bird,
Unicorn, Getaround, Cerner, Oracle, Samsung US, Edmunds.com, Textron Aviation,
Morgan Stanley, Spirit AeroSystems, Mozilla, UiPath, Plexus, Cisco,
Ancestry.com, Clover Health, State Street Corporation, Anthem, Transamerica,
Verizon, MassMutual, Disney, Carnival, Abbott Labs, EmblemHealth, Harley
Davidson, Cargill, Eversource Energy, Best Buy, Southern California Edison, and
Qualcomm.
Six months later, record layoffs are
piling up.
—Last week in California, VMWare,
downtown San Jose's Hilton Hotel, Veritas, Blackhawk Country Club, Gap,
Chartwells, and Silver Creek Sportsplex in San Jose all announced hundreds more
Bay Area layoffs.
—Among the companies confirming new
COVID-related permanent layoffs reported by The Wall Street Journal:
GM Resorts International, Stanley Black & Decker Inc., and Coca-Cola.
—American Airlines Group Inc. and United
Airlines Holdings Inc. are threatening to ax more than 53,000 workers unless
they get new federal bailouts. Frontier Airlines signaled nearly 400 layoffs in
Colorado.
—Even as it crowed about record
quarterly sales, Salesforce handed out pink-slip notices to 1,000 of its
employees.
—Despite promising not to cut workers in
the midst of the COVID chaos, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp. and Wells
Fargo are now all considering doing just that.
—In Florida, more than 1,900 hotel
employees are facing layoffs or temporary layoffs at Loews Hotels and Co and
Marriott.
—Telecom giant Cisco plans to lay off an
unspecified number of workers amid business troubles.
—Manufacturing giant 3M slashed 1,500
jobs at the beginning of the month.
—Walmart laid off hundreds of employees
in its logistics, real estate, and retail location planning departments over
the past two months.
—Hundreds of health care workers have
been laid off in Cook County, Illinois, Cape Cod, the University of Texas
Medical Branch Health system, Lynwood Hospital in Los Angeles, and Minnesota's
state hospital system.
Remember these laid-off workers when
Beltway crapweasels come back from their Labor Day holiday to lobby for more
imported foreign farmworkers, work permits for illegal immigrant DREAMers, H-1B
tech visas, more foreign doctors and other medical professionals, Silicon
Valley tax breaks, and Fortune 500 bailouts.
I repeat: There is no American worker
shortage — only a shortage of politicians who truly put American workers first.
Michelle Malkin is a conservative
blogger at michellemalkin.com, syndicated columnist, author, and founder of
hotair.com. Michelle Malkin's email address
is MichelleMalkinInvestigates@protonmail.com.
Chamber
of Commerce Backs Freshmen House Dems Over Trade and Immigration
AP2 Sep
202011
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Chamber of
Commerce has decided to endorse 23 freshmen House Democrats in this fall’s elections, a bipartisan move by an organization
that has long leaned strongly toward Republicans.
The country’s largest business group is also endorsing 29
freshmen House Republicans, said a person familiar with the organization’s
decision who described the actions. Even so, the decision has prompted internal
divisions, with some state chamber officials criticizing the national group’s
decision to back freshmen Democrats in their areas.
The House freshmen the chamber is endorsing
include several who face tough reelections, such as
Reps. Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne of Iowa, Andy
Kim of New Jersey, Xochitl Torres Small of New
Mexico, Anthony Brindisi of New York, Kendra Horn
of Oklahoma, Joe Cunningham of South Carolina and
Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia.
The chamber has a long track record of using most of its
political might to back Republican candidates, especially with money. But the
organization has had to recalibrate its tactics as the once-reliably
pro-business GOP has taken a more populist, conservative hue on issues like
immigration and trade, reflecting the views of President Donald Trump and
hard-right tea party adherents whose numbers in Congress have grown.
In earlier indications of the chamber’s more bipartisan
approach, it has boosted some campaign contributions to Democrats and changed
how it assigns publicly released scores about whether lawmakers help business,
now factoring in whether they try reaching across party lines.
The moves come as Democrats seem all but certain to continue
running the House after November’s elections. Any support for Democrats helps
the chamber maintain lines of communication with them, especially as growing
numbers of progressive Democrats in Congress makes it harder for business
groups to find allies in the party.
Democrats in tough reelection fights can cite the chamber’s
backing “as a sort of Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” said Liam Donovan, a
lobbyist and former GOP political operative.
The chamber is also endorsing freshmen
Democratic Reps. Greg Stanton of Arizona;
Josh Harder, TJ Cox and Harley Rouda of
California; Sharice Davids of Kansas; David
Trone of Maryland; Haley Stevens of Michigan;
Angie Craig and Dean Phillips of Minnesota;
Susie Lee of Nevada; Antonio Delgado of New
York; Colin Allred and Lizzie Fletcher of Texas
and Ben McAdams of Utah.
The person describing the chamber’s endorsements would only do
so on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the
moves publicly. The decision by the chamber, which issued no statement about
the matter, was first reported by The Hill newspaper.
Earlier this year, the chamber said it
spent six figures on digital ads opposing Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., in a primary that the progressive lawmaker won easily.
Otherwise, all of the chamber’s $2 million so far in the 2020
campaign on outside spending — money spent without coordinating with candidates
— went to helping Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Center for
Responsive Politics. So did all of the $40 million in outside spending by the
chamber during the 2018 and 2016 campaigns.
Yet the chamber’s much smaller, direct contributions to
candidates have been more evenhanded, if politically pragmatic.
The $210,000 the chamber’s political action committee has
donated directly to 2020 candidates’ campaigns has been split about evenly
between Democrats and Republicans, the center’s data shows. In 2018, about
2-in-3 dollars it gave to House candidates went to Republicans.
The chamber has also contributed $168,000 this year to GOP candidates
for the Senate and nothing to Democrats. Since it is unclear if Republicans
will continue running the Senate, the chamber’s contributions to Senate GOP
candidates have more political weight than spending on the House, where control
isn’t in serious doubt.
Some state chambers complained to U.S. chamber officials about
the expected endorsements, arguing that the Democratic lawmakers did not have
sufficiently pro-business records.
Chad Warmington, president of the Oklahoma state chamber,
opposed the expected endorsement of Horn, who was narrowly elected in 2018 to a
district centered on Oklahoma City. Warmington said he believes Horn hasn’t
been supportive enough of the state’s oil and gas industry.
“A U.S. chamber endorsement can be persuasive in convincing
voters that she’s pro-business,” Warmington said in an interview last week.
“And I don’t believe there is enough evidence to say she is. I was saying to
them, ‘Stay out’” and don’t endorse anyone.
Alan Cobb, president of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, said he
objected to the U.S. organization’s expected endorsement of Davids, from the
Kansas City area. Cobb said he prefers Davids’ GOP opponent, Amanda Adkins, a
businesswoman and former member of the state chamber’s board.
Warmington and Cobb both said they’d not been consulted by the
national chamber about the endorsements.
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