Arbejdsløsheden stiger kraftigt i USA på grund af coronakrisen, da store dele af erhvervslivet er sat i stå. Udsigt til 2 millioner arbejdsløse – langt værre end under finanskrisen. Det kan ende i en kortvarig ledighed på 10 pct.
Uddrag fra ING:
US: The big, bad number of the week
The economic pain caused by the Covid-19 outbreak is evident in mass lay-offs across the country. This reinforces the urgent need for fiscal support for those most heavily impacted.
The intensifying economic pain from Covid-19
For what it is worth, the economic data for January and February keeps on coming and it’s been great.
Based on the numbers released so far the US was on course to record annualised growth of around 3% for the first quarter. That is now ancient history. The fear surrounding the Covid-19 outbreak and the measures to try to limit its spread have resulted in broad swathes of the US economy grinding to a halt. Recession is now unavoidable.
There has been particular pain felt in the leisure, hospitality and consumer service sectors. Restaurants and bars have closed across the country while the travel industry has been decimated as orders to keep movements to a minimum are heeded. Our current best guess is for the economy to contract by around 10% in the second quarter although even this figure is looking increasingly too optimistic.
Those people that can are increasingly working from home. However, not every job can be configured to be able to work remotely. Consequently, we are seeing worker lay-offs surge higher across the country as businesses are squeezed between a collapse in demand and tighter financial conditions.
US initial jobless claims
Unemployment is surging
Yesterday’s weekly initial jobless claims spiked 70,000 or 33% to 281,000, but a much bigger surge is likely next week. Individual states have been publishing data that suggest there has been between a four and ten-fold increase in jobless claims in recent days. California, for example, has recorded 190,000 claims versus 58,000 last week while in Ohio they have jumped from 7000 to 78,000. These are not seasonally adjusted figures, but with anecdotal evidence that states have not been able to fully log all applications due to jammed phone lines and website crashes, we should be braced for a truly awful figure next Thursday.
Assuming we average out at a seven-fold increase in claims versus last week this would translate into a 2 million rise in jobless claims. By way of comparison, the record high was 695,000 in early October 1982 with the Global Financial Crisis peak being 665,000 in late March 2009. Over the following couple of weeks, the numbers will drop back from this initial surge but will remain elevated at around the million mark.
With firms simply not hiring – apart from grocery and logistic companies – we are likely to see the unemployment rate rocket although it may not reach the 10% highs seen in the global financial crisis. After all, we are unlikely to be alone in hoping conditions improve and containment measures will be relaxed at some point in late 2Q. This could lead to a sense we might be on the path to normality in 2H20, which would presumably deter many companies from mass lay-offs. If we are wrong on this then 10%+ unemployment would be realistic.