In a new survey of small business owners, almost half (43%) say their livelihood is on the line and they are going to be forced to close permanently if they cannot resume normal activities soon. One in 10 (11%) are less than one month away from permanently going out of business thanks to the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Additionally, about one in four (24%) small businesses have already shut down temporarily in response to the government’s demands to do so during the COVID-19 panic and overreaction. Among those that have not, 40% say they are likely to close at least temporarily within the next two weeks. This means a total of 54% of all small businesses report that they have closed or expect to close temporarily in the next 14 days.
The biggest help will come in the form of being allowed to reopen and conduct business as they had done. Getting the economy up and running again is going to go the furthest when it comes to saving lives and helping people. At this point, the statistics of the outbreak provided by healthcare professionals no longer support a lockdown, economic shutdown, and the ramifications that have already followed. The government’s overreaction has done more harm than good.
As a society, we need to do right by those who offer services and get them reopened and return our lives to normal; before the authoritarian government takeover. This pandemic is not the problem and has not been the problem for the past month. The problem is the government’s response to it and the subsequent obedience of many Americans thanks to their own fears pushed down their throats by the mainstream media. Far too many have been inclined to comply with the government’s commands to their own detriment and the fallout is going to be something we have never seen.
Worldwide working hours will be cut by nearly 7% in the second quarter of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Tuesday statement by the UN's International Labor Organization. The loss will be equivalent to 195m full-time workers.
Nearly two-fifths of the 3.3 billion global workforce - some 1.25bn workers, are employed in hard-hit sectors, from food services to manufacturing, to real estate and accommodation. According to the report, over 80% of the global workforce live in countries subject to either partial or full lockdowns.
"Workers and businesses are facing catastrophe, in both developed and developing economies," according to ILO director-general Guy Ryder. "It will hit the most vulnerable the hardest."
According to the Financial Times, the sheer scale and speed of job losses due to coronavirus has taken world leaders by surprise - after nearly 10 million people in the US filed initial jobless claims during the last two weeks in March. The ILO has warned that the pandemic could result in 25 million lost jobs in 2020 - more than those lost in the 2008 financial crisis.
Mr Ryder said it now seemed likely that more than 30m jobs were lost in the first quarter alone, and the ILO now expected a much more severe short-term impact, using more timely data from business surveys and Google search trends to illustrate what it called “the dire reality of the current labour market situation”. -FT
The cascading failures that have been set into motion by this “coronavirus shutdown” are going to make the financial crisis of 2008 look like a Sunday picnic. As you will see below, it is being estimated that unemployment in the U.S. is already higher than it was at any point during the last recession. That means that millions of American workers no longer have paychecks coming in and won’t be able to pay their mortgages. On top of that, the CARES Act actually requires all financial institutions to allow borrowers with government-backed mortgages to defer payments for an extended period of time. Of course this is a recipe for disaster for mortgage lenders, and industry insiders are warning that we are literally on the verge of a “collapse” of the mortgage market.
Never before in our history have we seen a jump in unemployment like we just witnessed. If you doubt this, just check out this incredible chart.
Millions upon millions of American workers are now facing a future with virtually no job prospects for the foreseeable future, and former Fed Chair Janet Yellen believes that the unemployment rate in the U.S. is already up to about 13 percent…
Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told CNBC on Monday the economy is in the throes of an “absolutely shocking” downturn that is not reflected yet in the current data.If it were, she said, the unemployment rate probably would be as high as 13% while the overall economic contraction would be about 30%.
If Yellen’s estimate is accurate, that means that unemployment in this country is already significantly worse than it was at any point during the last recession.
And young adults are being hit particularly hard during this downturn…
It is being projected that up to 30 percent of all mortgages could eventually default, and when you add the fact that millions upon millions of Americans will be deferring payments thanks to the CARES Act, it all adds up to big trouble for the mortgage industry…
And the longer this coronavirus shutdown persists, the worse things will get for our economy.
In fact, economist Stephen Moore is actually predicting that we will be “facing a potential Great Depression scenario” if normal economic activity does not resume in a few weeks…
Sunday on New York AM 970 radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” economist Stephen Moore weighed in on the potential impact of the coronavirus to the United States economy.Moore warned the nation could be “facing a potential Great Depression scenario” if the United States stays on lockdown much past the beginning of May, as well as an additional amount of deaths caused by the raised unemployment rate.
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