Octopus Overlords

Kraken wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2020 12:45 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2020 11:03 am Also ordered a few sheets of moon landing commemorative stamps. Theys cool looking.

I got those and the T Rex stamps. Yes, I'm still 8 years old: dinosaurs and spaceships!

Octavious wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 12:26 pm And one of her co-workers gave notice yesterday beating her. This is a very small office like 10 people so they won't be amused on Friday. Insurance is booming right now apparently.

Car rental company Hertz filed for bankruptcy protection Friday, citing an "abrupt decline in revenue" during the coronavirus pandemic.

Hertz is just the latest high-profile company to feel the financial pain of the COVID-19 crisis: Retailers J.C. Penney, J. Crew, and Neiman Marcus all filed for bankruptcy protection this month. Home-decor chain Pier 1 Imports announced it would be closing for good, with final closing sales beginning Memorial Day weekend.
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In April the company, which includes car-rental brands Dollar, Thrifty and Firefly, missed a payment on its debt, but reached a short-term deal with its creditors. The company was unable to secure a long-term agreement.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2020 5:42 pm So many stores we grew up with and thought would be around forever has died off in the last 15 years.

Default wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2020 10:50 pm Parcels, people. You order stuff online, a lot of it comes through us, even the UPS and FedEx stuff. It's the lack of advertising mail and the fraudulent pension prefunding that is killing us. Without the prefunding, we would be ok.

Oh, and Monday makes day 50.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2020 4:28 pm I always miss fist day. I should set a reminder.

U.S. consumers cut spending by the most on record for the second straight month in April while boosting savings to an all-time high, and the growing frugality reinforced expectations the economy could take years to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report from the Commerce Department on Friday, together with news that monthly exports collapsed, left economists anticipating the largest contraction in gross domestic product in the second quarter since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Data has also been dismal this month on the labor market, manufacturing production and homebuilding.

The Commerce Department said consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, plunged 13.6% last month, the biggest drop since the government started tracking the series in 1959. It eclipsed the previous all-time decrease of 6.9% in March.
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“The saving rate represents both opportunity and a warning,” said Chris Low, chief economist at FHN in New York. “If the economy reopens quickly without consequence these savings represent considerable spending power in the second half. If it takes longer to reopen the economy, these savings will be used for sustenance over the next few months.”

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Fri May 29, 2020 12:52 pm Reuters

U.S. consumers cut spending by the most on record for the second straight month in April while boosting savings to an all-time high, and the growing frugality reinforced expectations the economy could take years to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report from the Commerce Department on Friday, together with news that monthly exports collapsed, left economists anticipating the largest contraction in gross domestic product in the second quarter since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Data has also been dismal this month on the labor market, manufacturing production and homebuilding.

The Commerce Department said consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, plunged 13.6% last month, the biggest drop since the government started tracking the series in 1959. It eclipsed the previous all-time decrease of 6.9% in March.
...
“The saving rate represents both opportunity and a warning,” said Chris Low, chief economist at FHN in New York. “If the economy reopens quickly without consequence these savings represent considerable spending power in the second half. If it takes longer to reopen the economy, these savings will be used for sustenance over the next few months.”

Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:19 pm Dang. I keep reading that the economy is going to surge next quarter, or maybe the one after that, or someday, probably. Hope you can get health insurance thru your wife's job; COBRA is a bitch. Do they have a COBRA assistance program this time around?

Jeff V wrote:

Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:19 pm Dang. I keep reading that the economy is going to surge next quarter, or maybe the one after that, or someday, probably. Hope you can get health insurance thru your wife's job; COBRA is a bitch. Do they have a COBRA assistance program this time around?

She had orientation today for a new job. She heard they have good insurance, whatever it is has to be better than COBRA.

When the U.S. government’s official jobs report for May came out on Friday, it included a note at the bottom saying there had been a major “error” indicating that the unemployment rate likely should be higher than the widely reported 13.3 percent rate.

The special note said that if this “misclassification error” had not occurred, the “overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,” meaning the unemployment rate would be about 16.3 percent for May.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that puts out the monthly jobs reports, said it was working to fix the problem.

“BLS and the Census Bureau are investigating why this misclassification error continues to occur and are taking additional steps to address the issue,” said a note at the bottom of the Bureau of Labor Statistics report.
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Economists say the BLS was trying to be as transparent as possible about how hard it is to collect real-time data during a pandemic. The BLS admitted that some people who should have been classified as “temporarily unemployed” during the shutdown were instead misclassified as employed but “absent” from work for “other reasons.”

The “other reason” category is normally used for people on vacation, serving jury duty or taking leave to care for a child or relative. These are typically situations where the worker decides to take leave. But in this unusual pandemic circumstance, the “other reason” category was applied to some people staying at home and waiting to be called back.

This problem started in March when there was a big jump in people claiming they were temporarily “absent” from work for “other reasons.” The BLS noticed this and flagged it right away. In March, the BLS said the unemployment rate likely should have been 5.4 percent, instead of the official 4.4 percent rate. In April, the BLS said the real unemployment rate was likely about 19.7 percent, not 14.7 percent.

Octavious wrote: ↑Mon May 18, 2020 3:46 pm

Octavious wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 12:26 pm And one of her co-workers gave notice yesterday beating her. This is a very small office like 10 people so they won't be amused on Friday. Insurance is booming right now apparently.

And when she gave notice on Friday she found out that her current company lost a bunch of insurance programs and is in dire straights. Programs renew yearly at this time. So she apparently ejected from the plane two seconds from it hitting the ground.

BLS asserts that 20,935,000 Americans were unemployed in May, attributing the decline to employers adding 2,509,000 jobs in May as states allowed “a limited resumption of economic activity.” But it’s not that simple. The unexpected decline in the jobless rate is based on a survey of businesses and households conducted over the week of May 16th, and BLS has also reported that 29,965,415 Americans received unemployment insurance benefits in the same week. That’s a gap of 8,980,415 people, enough to raise the May jobless rate 5.7 percentage points to 19.0 percent and much closer to economists’ expectations.

How did the Labor Department come up with such a low figure? Part of it is the Payroll Protection Program: The BLS counted anyone who employers say were still being paid as employed “even if they were not actually at their jobs.” Part of it involves how the BLS treats the many millions of people now on furlough and not being paid. They are considered “unemployed on temporary layoff.” But if BLS expects them to return to their old jobs, based on the survey, they do not count among the unemployed.

Those judgments are left to the BLS’s discretion, and the agency does not issue any data on those decisions. Yet a recent analysis from the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago estimated that 42 percent of people furloughed by the COVID-19 crisis will never get their old jobs back, and only 30 percent of those laid off will land new jobs later this year. With 30 million people receiving unemployment benefits, that analysis is more consistent with unemployment at 19.0 percent today than 13.3 percent. BLS itself acknowledges in its May report that counting those on furlough as unemployed would raise its official rate to 16.3 percent.