CQ Day 77: Over 40,000,000 Without Jobs

The number of jobless claims in the U.S. has now risen to over 40.8 million, so much worse than even the New York Times' front page graph showed earlier this month.

The "Great Recession" of 2008 is almost invisible on this graph. These are numbers economists have never seen, never expected, and don't know what to do with.

CQ: Day 62: What About School??

I posted an article to Facebook today that says the future of universities is online, partnering with major tech companies: 

"The post-pandemic future, he says, will entail partnerships between the largest tech companies in the world and elite universities. Think MIT@Google. iStanford. HarvardxFacebook."

I don't know if that's the future but I do know that brick and mortar universities were losing enrollment before the Coronavirus crisis. Now suddenly they've had to do the last two months of teaching online, and they may have to (at least partially) do it this Fall. People are starting to find out very quickly if they're ready for online learning.

That includes grade school and high school as well, though since those kids are traveling long distances, it's a little more doable, at least in the short term. But if we have to socially distance this Fall, then we're going to have to have school run 3-4 times longer each day and have 3-4 times the staff. That's not going to work.

The local charter school has had this sign out for a while but I didn't get a chance to snap it until May 24, 2020 while on a grocery run. This photo was later added to this blog entry.

CQ: Day 58: Unemployment Falls Off A Cliff

Unemployment numbers have now reached over 20,000,000.  For some perspective, the New York Times from page today showed the "graph" of the numbers, which required the entire front page to show how far the U.S. has dropped. Gulp.

Here's another way to look at it, showing jobs added and lost in the last 10 years: