This evening, from Scranton, Pa., former VP Joe Biden was at the town hall event hosted by CNN, and moderated by Anderson Cooper. Earlier in the week we discussed President Trump’s town hall, also in Pennsylvania. This state selection is not a coincidence as Pennsylvania is very much a battleground in the campaign. Recall that President Trump won the state in 2016 by a slim margin – Pennsylvania is typically a Democratic party stronghold in Presidential elections. Just as the President did what he needed to do, the same holds true for Joe Biden. Neither man had any major gaffe that would derail their respective campaigns. Nonetheless, this provides the country with a little sneak preview of perhaps how the first debate will look when that takes place on 29 September. Some topics of discussion during the town hall pertained to taxes, healthcare, and energy – all of which we explore during today’s podcast.
Also covered today were the typical data points related to initial jobless claims, which came in at 860,000 for the week ending 12 September. The prior week’s number was also revised upward by 9,000 to 893,000. When looking at the report in aggregate we see that the total among persons claiming some form of unemployment benefit came in at 29.8 million. This is a week-over-week increase of some 98,000. This is for the week ending 29 August, as their is a lag for these figures. What is interesting to note in this report is that this grand total weekly change saw a notable increase to the “Regular State” category of some 215,000. Is this indicative of the next wave of layoffs? It can be reasoned that if this is the case, that a significant portion of these potential layoffs will be borne by white-collar jobs. We have been seeing a marked increase in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency UC programs over the last few weeks, which were creations of the Nobody CARES Act. Under these programs, assistance was extended and/or given to those who typically would not qualify for Regular State unemployment benefits – such as gig/contract workers and the self-employed. The fact that we are now seeing an increase in Regular State, may very well indicate that another round of layoffs is underway. Also indicative of this is the fact that we are still experiencing several hundred thousand layoffs per week, several months into this pandemic.
Per our analysis, this is not surprising to see, unfortunately. However, it is still difficult to gain a true sense of the jobs picture because of the distortionary effects of fiscal and monetary policy. So it will likely be at least a few more months until be we gain a better view on the jobs front – as moratoriums are lifted/expire, evictions pick up, and further bankruptcies and insolvencies come down the pike. Stay diversified, stay vigilant, and stay with The Kapital News. #Economy #Jobs #Unemployment #DNC #RNC #Bailouts #Debt #Recession #Inflation #Gold #Silver #Depression #USA #Trump #Biden #Liberty #Revolution #BananaRepublic #EndTheFed
