Timeline for Is there mass unemployment in the USA or is there not?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
36 events
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| Jul 12, 2020 at 15:37 | comment | added | Relaxed | @Acccumulation There is a difference, that's the whole point of these measures. A business is a complex thing, preserving the links between its different parts preserves the economy's productive capacity. You mentioned supply lines, you're very right about that and that's exactly the point. Taking week-ends off or leave days (in Europe 3-4 weeks at once is normal) do not disrupt them as much as breaking the employment relationship. The type of furloughs we are talking about are precisely a way to organise society to have people take some additional weeks off when necessary. | |
| Jul 10, 2020 at 0:54 | comment | added | Acccumulation | People use weekends to socialize, do errands, catch up on housework, etc. The first is significantly curtailed, the second is limited if they involve nonessential businesses, and the last has diminishing returns once you have every day off. Not only does taking two days a week off naturally disrupt supply lines less than taking several months, supply lines have been built around people taking weekends off. | |
| Jul 10, 2020 at 0:54 | comment | added | Acccumulation | @SteveJessop I don't see much difference. Society is organized around people getting weekends off. Society has "decided" that there are benefits to taking weekends off, and thus doing so is better than working every day. Those benefits don't apply to taking several months off. | |
| Jul 10, 2020 at 0:46 | comment | added | Acccumulation | @Relaxed There isn't much difference between the government giving money directly to workers versus them giving the money to someone to give to workers. | |
| Jul 8, 2020 at 15:13 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | @Acccumulation: it is, because there's a significant difference to the economy between someone who has a job lined up for August, and someone who doesn't. For a more extreme case of the same thinking, we don't demand that the reported unemployment rate must spike at the weekend (and even if the government for some reason subsidised employers to give people the weekends off, we still wouldn't). | |
| Jul 8, 2020 at 15:08 | comment | added | Relaxed | @Acccumulation Oscar's initial comment was poorly phrased, especially if you are unfamiliar with the system, but is the difference clear to you now? They are not getting money from the government, their employers are. | |
| Jul 7, 2020 at 17:55 | comment | added | Acccumulation | @SteveJessop It may make a difference to the individual employee, but it's not much difference as far as evaluating the health of an economy. | |
| Jul 7, 2020 at 17:54 | comment | added | Acccumulation | @TyHayes Oscar Bravo said they're being paid by the government. And the argument "If you call one person getting money from the government unemployed, then you have to call everyone getting money from the government unemployed" is bizarre. | |
| Jul 7, 2020 at 11:57 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | Granted, it is temporarily a zero hours contract with a generous retainer, and you can quite reasonably argue that (a) monthly unemployment figures should include anyone working less than a threshold of hours regardless of contract; (b) in some cases furlough is just delaying the inevitable redundancy and hence is manipulating the stats. But there's definitely a difference between "furloughed" and "sacked, but with a possibility of being rehired in future". You're accumulating length of service, leave entitlement, etc. You are, in all senses other than actually doing any work, an employee. | |
| Jul 7, 2020 at 11:57 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | @Acccumulation: other than the payroll procedure, the meaningful difference is that furloughed employees are still under contract to their employer, and we do not (mostly) have "at will employment" in the UK. So there is a meaningful contractual difference between being furloughed and not having a job at all: once the agreed period of furlough ends you still have a job (perhaps one at risk of redundancy, but a job). | |
| Jul 7, 2020 at 11:47 | comment | added | Oscar Bravo | @PaulDraper As mentioned by Ty Hayes - UK furloughed workers are not unemployed. They cannot claim unemployment benefit, still get a payslip and still pay tax! They also go back to work when the scheme ends. You might argue that this is an artificial situation and that there might not be any jobs left then, but for the moment, the UK unemployment rate is not enormously higher than it was pre-Covid. | |
| Jul 7, 2020 at 10:52 | comment | added | Ty Hayes | @Accumulation Furloughed UK employees are actually still being paid by their employers. The employers are receiving money in grants from the government to fund that. If you count that as unemployed, then pretty much any employee of a government funded body is 'unemployed' | |
| Jul 7, 2020 at 7:03 | comment | added | reirab | I reverted the change from Glorfindel because the added reference was from early March. The U.S. actually did have its best unemployment numbers in quite a long time at that point, as that was before any significant number of layoffs or furloughs happened due to the pandemic. The question is asking about now, not pre-pandemic, but the claim in the question has not actually been made since the pandemic started significantly affecting employment. | |
| Jul 7, 2020 at 7:01 | history | rollback | reirab |
Rollback to Revision 4
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| Jul 7, 2020 at 4:37 | answer | added | Allure | timeline score: 11 | |
| Jul 7, 2020 at 0:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackPolitics/status/1280290459894657025 | ||
| Jul 6, 2020 at 21:51 | answer | added | Lawnmower Man | timeline score: 10 | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 19:09 | comment | added | Paul Draper | @OscarBravo that's similar to the U.S. The employer mandates unpaid leave, and the employee files for unemployment insurance (can depend on the state). IMO it's odd that the UK wouldn't count people without work (but with govt benefits) as unemployed, but as long as it's consistent I suppose. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 18:50 | history | edited | Glorfindel | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 6, 2020 at 18:08 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jul 6, 2020 at 19:52 | |||||
| Jul 6, 2020 at 18:01 | comment | added | Acccumulation | @OscarBravo "In the UK, furloughed workers were paid 80% of their salary by the Govt." Not working and on government dole sounds like "unemployed" to me. Why does it matter whether the dole is called "furlough pay" or "unemployment insurance"? | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 17:50 | comment | added | Joe | Very confused as to how this is still open. Linked tweet doesn't support the question as asked. I realize this isn't Skeptics, but still, standards?? | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 16:24 | comment | added | reirab | @user3067860 Except for collecting unemployment. Which, while not typical, was actually more than 100% of normal pay in some cases due to the weird way the temporarily-increased unemployment benefits for COVID were designed. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 12:32 | comment | added | user3067860 | @OscarBravo Very different, in the US "furloughed" is usually "mandatory, temporary, unpaid leave". For federal furlough (e.g. during federal shutdown) usually workers are paid after for that time, but for a private furlough you're just...not paid. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 12:15 | history | edited | Machavity |
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| Jul 6, 2020 at 12:05 | comment | added | Oscar Bravo | @PaulDraper So the US furloughed the workers but left them in that big red spike of unemployed in the graph? I think we might have different interpretations of furloughed... In the UK, furloughed workers were paid 80% of their salary by the Govt. and did not become registered unemployed. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 9:52 | comment | added | Paul Draper | @OscarBravo, that's not a distinction relevant to these numbers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the source of U.S. unemployment figures), furloughed employees are counted as unemployed, specifically "unemployed on temporary layoff". In fact, the vast majority of "unemployed" persons in the U.S. over the last few months were furloughed not terminated. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 8:33 | comment | added | Oscar Bravo | @PaulDraper good for a record breaking global pandemic - Only true if you assume a pandemic must lead to massive unemployment. Many countries simply furloughed workers: they did not become unemployed. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 4:36 | comment | added | reirab | The linked tweet does not make the claim that this question asks about. It's a claim regarding the number of jobs added (back) to the economy in May (which is probably true, as a lot of stuff reopened in May.) A lot of businesses shut down (either voluntarily or by requirement) in March and April. A very large percentage of those reopened in May. | |
| Jul 5, 2020 at 23:04 | comment | added | Paul Draper | Unemployment is at 13% which was the average of 2008. So high, but good for a record breaking global pandemic. | |
| Jul 5, 2020 at 23:03 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Jul 5, 2020 at 13:02 | history | edited | Glorfindel | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 5, 2020 at 12:34 | answer | added | Glorfindel | timeline score: 45 | |
| Jul 5, 2020 at 12:29 | history | edited | Glorfindel | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 5, 2020 at 12:10 | review | First posts | |||
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| Jul 5, 2020 at 12:09 | history | asked | hilario | CC BY-SA 4.0 |