April jobs report: 20.5 million jobs lost, unemployment at 14.7% highest since the Depression

[GP270watch]

During the Obama years trump said that the numbers were wrong, and that unemployment was higher than stated.
Then as President, he agreed with the numbers and would tout how great the numbers (and "his work") are.
Wonder if trump will now go back to saying that the unemployment numbers are fake (how convenient).

 We are going to see unprecedented stupidity, paranoia, and orange faced babbling about all kinds of subjects in this Presidential run. Not looking forward to it.

[Panda Express]

If you would have told me at the onset of the Trump presidency that his first term would be ending with mass death, the worst economy since the Great Depression, no Wall and mass corruption/grifting, I would have responded "sounds about right".

[ProudModerate2]

If you would have told me at the onset of the Trump presidency that his first term would be ending with mass death, the worst economy since the Great Depression, no Wall and mass corruption/grifting, I would have responded "sounds about right".

LMAO.
This made me laugh a lot. Thank you.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

My hot take is that most of these jobs would have been lost under any president so pointing to these numbers as evidence of Trump's failure is wrong.

The main backstop to sliding unemployment is PPP payments of which we've already seen multiple rounds of loans go out. You can argue this is insufficient but in that case it's not solely on Trump; blame could just as easily to go Pelosi, Schumer, and McConnell (probably more McConnell than the others for being so uninterested in being in charge of anything related to pandemic).

The one employment-related failure I can think of is the hideously scarce assistance to state and local governments, but even if all of these people were still employed, unemployment would still probably be way north of 10%.

So I'm not really interested in reading people pinning these numbers on Trump. Similar numbers would have come out during an Obama or Biden presidency.

[Hermit For Peace]

they never should have shut down the economy

[emailking]

Well as I've said before, if he gets to take credit for all the economic prosperity in the first 3 years, which he did, many many times, then he has to take responsibility for any losses as well.

If he had said, this is great and I'll do what I can to help it along but honestly the President can't affect the economy that much, then yeah I wouldn't put this depression on him.

[GP270watch]

 If Obama had this response and these numbers he would be savaged by the media, all of the media. Obama took over GWB's trash economy and still got irrational criticism about his recovery. Trump deserves all the criticism he's getting.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Well as I've said before, if he gets to take credit for all the economic prosperity in the first 3 years, which he did, many many times, then he has to take responsibility for any losses as well.

If he had said, this is great and I'll do what I can to help it along but honestly the President can't affect the economy that much, then yeah I wouldn't put this depression on him.

Sure, I won't contest the point that Trump lies about everything he can. I agree that most voters will blame Trump for job losses even if I think they shouldn't.

I'm just willing to bet most Dems simultaneously think that the 2017-2019 expansion was all due to Obama and the 2020 contraction was all due to Trump.

What I think Trump will be rightly on the hook for is how quickly jobs are regained. If it's December and most people are still out of work due to an unconstrained virus or a limp recovery that mostly gets absorbed by cronies and large enterprise then that will most likely be due to his own failures.

If Obama had this response and these numbers he would be savaged by the media, all of the media. Obama took over GWB's trash economy and still got irrational criticism about his recovery. Trump deserves all the criticism he's getting.

Why does media criticism of Obama (some of which was earned) have any bearing on the objective amount of blame Trump deserves?

[GP270watch]

Well as I've said before, if he gets to take credit for all the economic prosperity in the first 3 years, which he did, many many times, then he has to take responsibility for any losses as well.

If he had said, this is great and I'll do what I can to help it along but honestly the President can't affect the economy that much, then yeah I wouldn't put this depression on him.

Sure, I won't contest the point that Trump lies about everything he can. I agree that most voters will blame Trump for job losses even if I think they shouldn't.

I'm just willing to bet most Dems simultaneously think that the 2017-2019 expansion was all due to Obama and the 2020 contraction was all due to Trump.

What I think Trump will be rightly on the hook for is how quickly jobs are regained. If it's December and most people are still out of work due to an unconstrained virus or a limp recovery that mostly gets absorbed by cronies and large enterprise then that will most likely be due to his own failures.

If Obama had this response and these numbers he would be savaged by the media, all of the media. Obama took over GWB's trash economy and still got irrational criticism about his recovery. Trump deserves all the criticism he's getting.

Why does media criticism of Obama (some of which was earned) have any bearing on the objective amount of blame Trump deserves?

 Because you're assuming the response by Obama would have been equally as bad or maybe worse. These numbers are Trump's to own. Trump's planning was that the virus would magically disappear in April, how the hell did that work out?

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Well as I've said before, if he gets to take credit for all the economic prosperity in the first 3 years, which he did, many many times, then he has to take responsibility for any losses as well.

If he had said, this is great and I'll do what I can to help it along but honestly the President can't affect the economy that much, then yeah I wouldn't put this depression on him.

Sure, I won't contest the point that Trump lies about everything he can. I agree that most voters will blame Trump for job losses even if I think they shouldn't.

I'm just willing to bet most Dems simultaneously think that the 2017-2019 expansion was all due to Obama and the 2020 contraction was all due to Trump.

What I think Trump will be rightly on the hook for is how quickly jobs are regained. If it's December and most people are still out of work due to an unconstrained virus or a limp recovery that mostly gets absorbed by cronies and large enterprise then that will most likely be due to his own failures.

If Obama had this response and these numbers he would be savaged by the media, all of the media. Obama took over GWB's trash economy and still got irrational criticism about his recovery. Trump deserves all the criticism he's getting.

Why does media criticism of Obama (some of which was earned) have any bearing on the objective amount of blame Trump deserves?

 Because you're assuming the response by Obama would have been equally as bad or maybe worse. These numbers are Trump's to own. Trump's planning was that the virus would magically disappear in April, how the hell did that work out?

No... I'm saying that absolutely no response would have stopped the majority of these jobs from temporarily evaporating. There are differences that could have been made at the margins but a highly transmissible virus with a higher-than-average death rate will necessarily stop economic activity. Unless you think a President can magically stop the virus at the water's edge (in which case you are wrong) job losses were inevitable as soon as the virus grew out of control in China.

Trump's response has been disastrous in most ways, but people losing their jobs because restaurants and don't want to stay open (to use a crass oversimplification) isn't really something you can lay solely at his feet.

[Frodo]

Well as I've said before, if he gets to take credit for all the economic prosperity in the first 3 years, which he did, many many times, then he has to take responsibility for any losses as well.

If he had said, this is great and I'll do what I can to help it along but honestly the President can't affect the economy that much, then yeah I wouldn't put this depression on him.

Sure, I won't contest the point that Trump lies about everything he can. I agree that most voters will blame Trump for job losses even if I think they shouldn't.

I'm just willing to bet most Dems simultaneously think that the 2017-2019 expansion was all due to Obama and the 2020 contraction was all due to Trump.

What I think Trump will be rightly on the hook for is how quickly jobs are regained. If it's December and most people are still out of work due to an unconstrained virus or a limp recovery that mostly gets absorbed by cronies and large enterprise then that will most likely be due to his own failures.

If Obama had this response and these numbers he would be savaged by the media, all of the media. Obama took over GWB's trash economy and still got irrational criticism about his recovery. Trump deserves all the criticism he's getting.

Why does media criticism of Obama (some of which was earned) have any bearing on the objective amount of blame Trump deserves?

 Because you're assuming the response by Obama would have been equally as bad or maybe worse. These numbers are Trump's to own. Trump's planning was that the virus would magically disappear in April, how the hell did that work out?

No... I'm saying that absolutely no response would have stopped the majority of these jobs from temporarily evaporating. There are differences that could have been made at the margins but a highly transmissible virus with a higher-than-average death rate will necessarily stop economic activity. Unless you think a President can magically stop the virus at the water's edge (in which case you are wrong) job losses were inevitable as soon as the virus grew out of control in China.

Trump's response has been disastrous in most ways, but people losing their jobs because restaurants and don't want to stay open (to use a crass oversimplification) isn't really something you can lay solely at his feet.

Seriously?  Then explain to me why Trump failed to contain the coronavirus when President Obama succeeded in containing Ebola just a few years earlier.  Yes, it has everything to do with who is in the White House. 

[Figueira]

they never should have shut down the economy

I agree, they shouldn't have. But unfortunately they're not capable of making ethical decisions, given that they're viruses.

The Communist Party of China is a virus, I agree.

That's obviously not what I meant, but I agree. The Chinese Communist Party was slow to react to this disease's spread; thereby making it even more inevitable that the US economy would shut down, regardless of what any governor did.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Well as I've said before, if he gets to take credit for all the economic prosperity in the first 3 years, which he did, many many times, then he has to take responsibility for any losses as well.

If he had said, this is great and I'll do what I can to help it along but honestly the President can't affect the economy that much, then yeah I wouldn't put this depression on him.

Sure, I won't contest the point that Trump lies about everything he can. I agree that most voters will blame Trump for job losses even if I think they shouldn't.

I'm just willing to bet most Dems simultaneously think that the 2017-2019 expansion was all due to Obama and the 2020 contraction was all due to Trump.

What I think Trump will be rightly on the hook for is how quickly jobs are regained. If it's December and most people are still out of work due to an unconstrained virus or a limp recovery that mostly gets absorbed by cronies and large enterprise then that will most likely be due to his own failures.

If Obama had this response and these numbers he would be savaged by the media, all of the media. Obama took over GWB's trash economy and still got irrational criticism about his recovery. Trump deserves all the criticism he's getting.

Why does media criticism of Obama (some of which was earned) have any bearing on the objective amount of blame Trump deserves?

 Because you're assuming the response by Obama would have been equally as bad or maybe worse. These numbers are Trump's to own. Trump's planning was that the virus would magically disappear in April, how the hell did that work out?

No... I'm saying that absolutely no response would have stopped the majority of these jobs from temporarily evaporating. There are differences that could have been made at the margins but a highly transmissible virus with a higher-than-average death rate will necessarily stop economic activity. Unless you think a President can magically stop the virus at the water's edge (in which case you are wrong) job losses were inevitable as soon as the virus grew out of control in China.

Trump's response has been disastrous in most ways, but people losing their jobs because restaurants and don't want to stay open (to use a crass oversimplification) isn't really something you can lay solely at his feet.

Seriously?  Then explain to me why Trump failed to contain the coronavirus when President Obama succeeded in containing Ebola just a few years earlier.  Yes, it has everything to do with who is in the White House.  

You simply cannot be following the news and be this stupid unless you only use sources that tell you what you want to hear and don't actually think about what they are saying. Ebola is not transmitted in the same way and as such its contagion factor is a small fraction of COVID-19's contagion factor.

Every single country in Europe and the Americas (and many others in addition to those! India, Iran and China devastated to name a few) has been severely impacted by this regardless of who is in charge. None were impacted by ebola. Clearly you are looking at the wrong variable that brings you the most pleasure to think about.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Trump can claim that this is due to states going on lock-down, and the virus itself, all he wants, and there is a case to be made about that; but he cannot escape the fact that his administration failing to take action earlier contributed as well. He bears culpability. The buck stops with him, just as it supposedly did with Obama.

This is yet more evidence that Trump has failed at his biggest test yet as President, and is continuing to fail, with absolutely dire consequences for millions of those that he is supposed to serve. This crisis should have been a slam-dunk for him, but he cannot help but to be dangerously incompetent and self-centered. The irony though is that it would have served him better to not downplay and ignore the virus in its early days. F***ing idiot.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Well as I've said before, if he gets to take credit for all the economic prosperity in the first 3 years, which he did, many many times, then he has to take responsibility for any losses as well.

If he had said, this is great and I'll do what I can to help it along but honestly the President can't affect the economy that much, then yeah I wouldn't put this depression on him.

Sure, I won't contest the point that Trump lies about everything he can. I agree that most voters will blame Trump for job losses even if I think they shouldn't.

I'm just willing to bet most Dems simultaneously think that the 2017-2019 expansion was all due to Obama and the 2020 contraction was all due to Trump.

What I think Trump will be rightly on the hook for is how quickly jobs are regained. If it's December and most people are still out of work due to an unconstrained virus or a limp recovery that mostly gets absorbed by cronies and large enterprise then that will most likely be due to his own failures.

If Obama had this response and these numbers he would be savaged by the media, all of the media. Obama took over GWB's trash economy and still got irrational criticism about his recovery. Trump deserves all the criticism he's getting.

Why does media criticism of Obama (some of which was earned) have any bearing on the objective amount of blame Trump deserves?

 Because you're assuming the response by Obama would have been equally as bad or maybe worse. These numbers are Trump's to own. Trump's planning was that the virus would magically disappear in April, how the hell did that work out?

No... I'm saying that absolutely no response would have stopped the majority of these jobs from temporarily evaporating. There are differences that could have been made at the margins but a highly transmissible virus with a higher-than-average death rate will necessarily stop economic activity. Unless you think a President can magically stop the virus at the water's edge (in which case you are wrong) job losses were inevitable as soon as the virus grew out of control in China.

Trump's response has been disastrous in most ways, but people losing their jobs because restaurants and don't want to stay open (to use a crass oversimplification) isn't really something you can lay solely at his feet.

You may be technically correct from a certain point of view, but it's not going to matter.

The GOP, led by Mr. Trump, spent February and March telling everyone how they had this under control, they'd stop the virus, we were well-prepared, etc.

The best argument Mr. Trump's defenders can make at this point is that he is not simply an utter incompetent at handling the United States' response to the pandemic from March onward, but that his preparation in February and earlier consisted of being a lying idiot. While it will doubtless be popular with much of the right-wing cult, I suspect it will prove insufficient to save his pasty hide.

[Frodo]

Well as I've said before, if he gets to take credit for all the economic prosperity in the first 3 years, which he did, many many times, then he has to take responsibility for any losses as well.

If he had said, this is great and I'll do what I can to help it along but honestly the President can't affect the economy that much, then yeah I wouldn't put this depression on him.

Sure, I won't contest the point that Trump lies about everything he can. I agree that most voters will blame Trump for job losses even if I think they shouldn't.

I'm just willing to bet most Dems simultaneously think that the 2017-2019 expansion was all due to Obama and the 2020 contraction was all due to Trump.

What I think Trump will be rightly on the hook for is how quickly jobs are regained. If it's December and most people are still out of work due to an unconstrained virus or a limp recovery that mostly gets absorbed by cronies and large enterprise then that will most likely be due to his own failures.

If Obama had this response and these numbers he would be savaged by the media, all of the media. Obama took over GWB's trash economy and still got irrational criticism about his recovery. Trump deserves all the criticism he's getting.

Why does media criticism of Obama (some of which was earned) have any bearing on the objective amount of blame Trump deserves?

 Because you're assuming the response by Obama would have been equally as bad or maybe worse. These numbers are Trump's to own. Trump's planning was that the virus would magically disappear in April, how the hell did that work out?

No... I'm saying that absolutely no response would have stopped the majority of these jobs from temporarily evaporating. There are differences that could have been made at the margins but a highly transmissible virus with a higher-than-average death rate will necessarily stop economic activity. Unless you think a President can magically stop the virus at the water's edge (in which case you are wrong) job losses were inevitable as soon as the virus grew out of control in China.

Trump's response has been disastrous in most ways, but people losing their jobs because restaurants and don't want to stay open (to use a crass oversimplification) isn't really something you can lay solely at his feet.

Seriously?  Then explain to me why Trump failed to contain the coronavirus when President Obama succeeded in containing Ebola just a few years earlier.  Yes, it has everything to do with who is in the White House.  

You simply cannot be following the news and be this stupid unless you only use sources that tell you what you want to hear and don't actually think about what they are saying. Ebola is not transmitted in the same way and as such its contagion factor is a small fraction of COVID-19's contagion factor.

You are correct that the coronavirus and Ebola are transmitted differently.  However, you are wrong about the 'contagion factor'.  The contagion or RO factor (the reproductive number of the disease) of Ebola is 1.5 to 2.0.  The coronavirus RO factor is 2.0 to 2.5.  It's not much different.  By comparison, mumps, measles, malaria, and the whooping cough are in the double-digits.   

Every single country in Europe and the Americas (and many others in addition to those! India, Iran and China devastated to name a few) has been severely impacted by this regardless of who is in charge. None were impacted by ebola.

None were impacted by Ebola because of proactive leadership by President Obama and the countries most heavily affected.  Something we conspicuously lack today. We would not be in the straits we are in now had Trump not been in the White House. 

Clearly you are looking at the wrong variable that brings you the most pleasure to think about.

Enough of the projection already. 

 

[Beet]

Frodo, I'm mostly on your side in this one, but stop comparing a virus that transmits through the air to one that only transmits via bodily fluids. R0 is not a fact of nature, it's just an epidemiological measurement tool that changes all the time.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

You are correct that the coronavirus and Ebola are transmitted differently.  However, you are wrong about the 'contagion factor'.  The contagion or RO factor (the reproductive number of the disease) of Ebola is 1.5 to 2.0.  The coronavirus RO factor is 2.0 to 2.5.  It's not much different.  By comparison, mumps, measles, malaria, and the whooping cough are in the double-digits.

As far as I am aware the 2.0-2.5 R0 has been disproven for months now. When I initially posted this, I was under the blind assumption that it was between 4.0 and 5.0, and yet in order to respond to this, it seems like most places are in agreement that 4.0 is definitely below their confidence interval.

The R0 for COVID-19 is a median of 5.7, according to a study published online in Emerging Infectious Diseases. That’s about double an earlier R0 estimate of 2.2 to 2.7

The 5.7 means that one person with COVID-19 can potentially transmit the coronavirus to 5 to 6 people, rather than the 2 to 3 researchers originally thought.

That's published about three weeks after your link as I was simply looking for the most recent source. I would prefer to take it from a more reliable source than either of the April articles, and this is the quickest place of repute that I can find confirming the same statistic as early as February:

Initially, the basic reproductive number, R0, was estimated to be 2.2 to 2.7. Here we provide a new estimate of this quantity. We collected extensive individual case reports and estimated key epidemiology parameters, including the incubation period. Integrating these estimates and high-resolution real-time human travel and infection data with mathematical models, we estimated that the number of infected individuals during early epidemic double every 2.4 days, and the R0 value is likely to be between 4.7 and 6.6.

I have not seen anyone talk about anything as low as you are citing since the early speculation. Please correct me if this statistic has been disproven since it's release and is still mistakenly cited.

As far as I am concerned, that invalidates any speculative nature of 'world leadership' controlling ebola vis a vis this. Other countries are responsible for their own outcomes. The EU has enough resources. America isn't their fallback.

[It’s so Joever]

I don’t blame Trump entirely for these numbers, but the truth is that he failed to act early and decisively which would have allowed us to recover faster.

[Frodo]

You are correct that the coronavirus and Ebola are transmitted differently.  However, you are wrong about the 'contagion factor'.  The contagion or RO factor (the reproductive number of the disease) of Ebola is 1.5 to 2.0.  The coronavirus RO factor is 2.0 to 2.5.  It's not much different.  By comparison, mumps, measles, malaria, and the whooping cough are in the double-digits.

As far as I am aware the 2.0-2.5 R0 has been disproven for months now. When I initially posted this, I was under the blind assumption that it was between 4.0 and 5.0, and yet in order to respond to this, it seems like most places are in agreement that 4.0 is definitely below their confidence interval.

The R0 for COVID-19 is a median of 5.7, according to a study published online in Emerging Infectious Diseases. That’s about double an earlier R0 estimate of 2.2 to 2.7

The 5.7 means that one person with COVID-19 can potentially transmit the coronavirus to 5 to 6 people, rather than the 2 to 3 researchers originally thought.

That's published about three weeks after your link as I was simply looking for the most recent source. I would prefer to take it from a more reliable source than either of the April articles, and this is the quickest place of repute that I can find confirming the same statistic as early as February:

Initially, the basic reproductive number, R0, was estimated to be 2.2 to 2.7. Here we provide a new estimate of this quantity. We collected extensive individual case reports and estimated key epidemiology parameters, including the incubation period. Integrating these estimates and high-resolution real-time human travel and infection data with mathematical models, we estimated that the number of infected individuals during early epidemic double every 2.4 days, and the R0 value is likely to be between 4.7 and 6.6.

I have not seen anyone talk about anything as low as you are citing since the early speculation. Please correct me if this statistic has been disproven since it's release and is still mistakenly cited.

You are correct -a recent study from the CDC has the RO factor at 5.7.  

As far as I am concerned, that invalidates any speculative nature of 'world leadership' controlling ebola vis a vis this. Other countries are responsible for their own outcomes. The EU has enough resources. America isn't their fallback.

Isolationism is exactly the wrong response when the coronavirus is impacting the entire world.  The oceans are clearly not protecting us from this virus.  We are all in this together.  And the last thing anyone wants is for the People's Republic of China (especially galling in light of this pandemic) to come out of this as the world superpower everyone turns to.  We beat the Ebola virus and other diseases in partnership with other nations, and the only way we can bring this coronavirus under control is to do the same.  Of course, it will not happen under this Reality TV 'President'.   

[GlobeSoc]

The reason that such a high unemployment rate is so bad is not because of some mystical thing called the economy, it is because the capital class is inflexible to the reality of the situation. A government that cared about workers rather than the upper class would not be seeking to "balance the interests of landlords and tenants" or bailing out big corporations. Hell, if they even pretended to care you might see the mass assistance that is being seen in vast swathes of Europe! What should matter is logistics, production capacity, and quality of life for the working class during this trying time. Although unlike a lot of fellow socialists, I believe that America could possibly be a force for immense good globally, the American capitalist experiment has yet again shown how callous it can be towards the consumers it allegedly seeks to empower.

[Tender Branson]

they never should have shut down the economy

That’s a flawed assumption.

In Sweden, which has 6x as many deaths as Austria, the economy and society was largely kept open.

But Sweden will nonetheless face the same economic recession as Austria this year, because of globalization (no demand anymore for Swedish products abroad).

The only good thing that might help Sweden later because of their strategy is that more Swedes than Austrians have antibodies now in case of a 2nd wave ...

[Frodo]

It's even worse than it looks:

Great Depression 2020? The unofficial U.S. jobless rate is at least 20%—or worse



And here are the unemployment rates during the Great Depression, by comparison:



It's essentially December 1931 going by the official figures.  

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

2009 was the last time we saw this rate of unemployment 9.9 percent . Trump wants us to reelect them, after Boehner complained about the Obama Economy in 2009 and unemployment was on the Downtrend