The past four weeks bear this stark distinction: Twenty-two million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment insurance, wiping out 21.5 million jobs that had been created in this country since the end of the Great Recession.
There is nothing good in those numbers — until you regain your senses and look at the situation objectively.
Why? Because many of the people who filed for unemployment benefits haven’t really been laid off. What their companies did was “furlough” them, or temporarily let them go until the economy can emerge from its coronavirus-induced coma.
If you look very deeply in the Bureau of Labor footnotes, you’ll find this: “the number of unemployed people who reported being on temporary layoff more than doubled in March to 1.8 million.”
“This 1 million gain represented the bulk of the increase in unemployment,” the US Labor Department said. The number of people who said they’ve lost their jobs permanently only increased to 1.5 million.
If the trend continues through April, the bulk of jobs lost are only temporarily gone. And a quick search of recent labor news shows that Pratt & Whitney, Collins Aerospace, Disney, Cinemark, the LA Times, Groupon, Tesla, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Nissan, Boeing and Party City all furloughed their workers instead of laying them off.
Of course, people who report to the Labor Department that their unemployment is temporary may later learn that their job has disappeared. But that’s also true for people who think they are permanently out of work. Many of them could be called back.
Don’t get me wrong. America isn’t likely to come out of this pandemic with as many jobs as it had before the virus shuttered the economy. But things aren’t going to be as bleak as the experts are predicting either.
