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    Unemployment Claims Rise Sharply, Showing New Economic Pain

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesA Future With CoronavirusVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyUnemployment Claims Rise Sharply, Showing New Economic PainWeekly filings for jobless benefits hit the highest level since July as the pandemic’s resurgence batters the service industry.A closed restaurant in Santa Barbara, Calif. The winter coronavirus wave has pummeled the leisure and hospitality industries.Credit…Bryan Denton for The New York TimesJan. 14, 2021Updated 7:08 p.m. ETTen months after the coronavirus crisis decimated the labor market, the resurgent pandemic keeps sending shock waves through the American economy.Though more than half of the 22 million jobs lost last spring have been regained, a new surge of infections has prompted shutdowns and layoffs that have hit the leisure and hospitality industries especially hard, dealing a setback to the recovery.The latest evidence came on Thursday when the Labor Department reported that initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose sharply last week, exceeding one million for the first time since July.Just days earlier, the government announced that employers had shed 140,000 jobs in December, the first net decline in employment since last spring, with restaurants, bars and hotels recording steep losses.“We’re in a deep economic hole, and we’re digging in the wrong direction,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist with the career site Glassdoor. “The report obviously shows that the rise in claims is worse than expected, and there is reason to think that things are going to get worse before they are going to get better.”That prospect is all the more troubling because a major element of the relief package signed by President Trump last month — a $300 weekly federal supplement to other unemployment benefits — is set to run out in mid-March.President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has said he will push a new stimulus package through Congress to provide a lifeline for workers and employers until the pandemic can be brought under control. His plan will include direct payments to most households along with aid to small businesses and local and state governments.The recent economic data has brought a new sense of urgency to such efforts, with millions struggling to make ends meet even as more job losses could be in the offing.The Labor Department said on Thursday that 1.15 million workers filed initial claims for state unemployment benefits during the first full week of the new year. A further 284,000 claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, an emergency federal program for freelancers, part-time workers and others normally ineligible for state jobless benefits. Neither figure is seasonally adjusted. On a seasonally adjusted basis, new state claims totaled 965,000.Before the pandemic, weekly filings typically totaled around 200,000.The holidays may have held down unemployment claims in previous weeks, with people waiting until the new year to submit claims. But several economists expressed skepticism that filing delays were a major driver of the uptick in claims last week.“I don’t think there’s any question that on the margin, there could be some unusual things going on,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com. “But we have to think also about the fact that these are not our grandfather’s unemployment lines — meaning much of this is done digitally. I think if one just tries to understand human nature, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that someone would be delaying a request for financial assistance when they’re out of work.”More likely, economists say, is that the $300 federal supplement prompted an increase in demand for benefits.Confusion over the new federal aid — which Mr. Trump spent several days threatening not to sign — may also have temporarily slowed down claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which fell during the week ending Jan. 2. The increase last week brought the numbers more in line with the previous elevated levels.Volunteers processing donations at a food pantry in Wichita, Kan. More than one million people filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week.Credit…Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesThose seeking new work have found diminishing prospects. Hiring slowed for five straight months before December’s outright reversal. In November, even before the recent surge in virus cases, the number of workers officially counted as unemployed outnumbered job openings by more than four million, according to the Labor Department.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Jobless, Selling Nudes Online and Still Struggling

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesA Future With CoronavirusVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineSavannah Benavidez created an OnlyFans account after losing her job as a medical biller. Credit…Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexJobless, Selling Nudes Online and Still StrugglingOnlyFans, a social media platform that allows people to sell explicit photos of themselves, has boomed during the pandemic. But competition on the site means many won’t earn much.Savannah Benavidez created an OnlyFans account after losing her job as a medical biller. Credit…Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 13, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSavannah Benavidez stopped working at her job as a medical biller in June to take care of her 2-year-old son after his day care shut down. Needing a way to pay her bills, she created an account on OnlyFans — a social media platform where users sell original content to monthly subscribers — and started posting photos of herself nude or in lingerie.Ms. Benavidez, 23, has made $64,000 since July, enough not just to take care of her own bills, but to help family and friends with rent and car payments.“It’s more money than I have ever made in any job,” she said. “I have more money than I know what to do with.”Lexi Eixenberger was hoping for a similar windfall when she started an OnlyFans account in November. A restaurant worker in Billings, Mont., Ms. Eixenberger, 22, has been laid off three times during the pandemic and was so in need of cash by October that she had to drop out of dental hygiene school. After donating plasma and doing odd jobs, she still didn’t have enough to pay her bills, so at the suggestion of some friends, she turned to OnlyFans. She has made only about $500 so far.Lexi Eixenberger lost her restaurant job three times and had to quit dental hygiene school. She became an OnlyFans creator, but hasn’t earned much so far.Credit…Janie Osborne for The New York TimesOnlyFans, founded in 2016 and based in Britain, has boomed in popularity during the pandemic. As of December, it had more than 90 million users and more than one million content creators, up from 120,000 in 2019. The company declined to comment for this article.With millions of Americans unemployed, some like Ms. Benavidez and Ms. Eixenberger are turning to OnlyFans in an attempt to provide for themselves and their families. The pandemic has taken a particularly devastating toll on women and mothers, wiping out parts of the economy where women dominate: retail businesses, restaurants and health care.“A lot of people are migrating to OnlyFans out of desperation,” said Angela Jones, an associate professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Farmingdale. “These are people who are worried about eating, they’re worried about keeping the lights on, they’re worried about not being evicted.”But for every person like Ms. Benavidez, who is able to use OnlyFans as her primary source of income, there are dozens more, like Ms. Eixenberger, who hope for a windfall and end up with little more than a few hundred dollars and worries that the photos will hinder their ability to get a job in the future.“It is already an incredibly saturated market,” Ms. Jones said of explicit content online. “The idea that people are just going to open up an OnlyFans account and start raking in the dough is really misguided.”The most successful content creators are often models, porn stars and celebrities who already have large social media followings. They can use their other online platforms to drive followers to their OnlyFans accounts, where they offer exclusive content to those willing to pay a monthly fee — even personalized content in exchange for tips. OnlyFans takes a 20 percent cut of any pay. Some creators receive tips through mobile payment apps, which aren’t subject to that cut; Ms. Benavidez earns most of her money this way.But many of the creators who have joined the platform out of dire financial need do not have large social media followings or any way to drum up consistent business.Elle Morocco posted this image to promote herself on her OnlyFans page.Credit…Elle MoroccoMs. Morocco said maintaining the account could feel like a full-time job.Credit…Elizabeth CraigElle Morocco of West Palm Beach, Fla., was laid off from her job as an office manager in July. Her unemployment checks don’t cover her $1,600 monthly rent, utility bills and food costs, so she joined OnlyFans in November.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Facing Intensifying Crises, Biden Pledges Action to Address Economy and Pandemic

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesCalls for Impeachment25th Amendment ExplainedTrump Officials ResignHow Mob Stormed CapitolAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFacing Intensifying Crises, Biden Pledges Action to Address Economy and PandemicWith job losses, record coronavirus numbers and politics in turmoil after the storming of the Capitol, the president-elect pressed for quick passage of a stimulus package to help struggling Americans.President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said it was up to Congress to decide whether to impeach President Trump, but he stressed that he expected lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to get to work quickly after he is sworn in on Jan. 20.Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesMichael D. Shear and Jan. 8, 2021WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Friday promised an accelerated response to a daunting and intensifying array of challenges as the economy showed new signs of weakness, the coronavirus pandemic killed more Americans than ever, and Congress weighed impeaching President Trump a second time.As Washington remained consumed with the fallout from the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday and Democrats stepped up their efforts to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his role in inciting the attack, Mr. Biden signaled that he intended to keep his focus on jobs and the pandemic, declining to weigh in on whether the House should impeach Mr. Trump.On a day the Labor Department reported that the economy lost 140,000 jobs in December, ending a seven-month streak of growth after the country’s plunge into recession in the spring, Mr. Biden said there was “a dire, dire need to act now.”He pledged to move rapidly once he becomes president to push a stimulus package through Congress to provide relief to struggling individuals, small businesses, students, local governments and schools.Mr. Biden and his aides have not yet finished the proposal or settled on its full amount. Forecasters expect further job losses this month, a casualty of the renewed surge of the coronavirus pandemic and state and local officials’ impositions of lockdowns and other restrictions on economic activity meant to slow the spread.“The price tag will be high,” Mr. Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Del.“It is necessary to spend the money now,” he said, apparently referring to his entire batch of economic plans, including both immediate aid and a larger bill that includes infrastructure spending. “The answer is yes, it will be in the trillions of dollars.”The Biden team is also preparing a wave of economic actions that will not require congressional approval. Mr. Biden’s aides said on Friday that the president-elect would direct the Education Department to extend a pause on student loan payments that was initially issued under Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden called on Congress on Friday to take “prompt action” to raise the federal minimum wage to at least $15 an hour.He also pledged to ramp up efforts to slow the spread of the virus, which is now claiming 4,000 lives each day — more than those who perished during the Battle of Antietam during the Civil War, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 or the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Biden’s team said the president-elect would immediately provide more vaccines to states when he takes office, breaking sharply from Mr. Trump’s practice of holding back some shots for second doses.“People are really, really, really in desperate shape,” Mr. Biden said.While he said the question of impeaching Mr. Trump was up to Congress, he assailed the president once again for his conduct in office even as he sought to position himself as focused on the issues of greatest immediate concern to voters: their health and economic security.“I thought for a long, long time President Trump was unfit to hold the job,” Mr. Biden said. “I’m focused on the virus, the vaccine and economic growth. What the Congress decides to do is for them to decide.”“But,” he added quickly, “they’re going to have to hit the ground running.”Along with the powers of the presidency that he will assume at noon on Jan. 20, Mr. Biden will take responsibility for guiding the country through a collision of crises more varied and intense than any that faced his recent predecessors. In addition to the pandemic and the faltering economy, they include racial tensions that demand reconciliation after simmering for decades and a deep political divide that flared into violence on Wednesday and rocked the country’s assumptions about its tradition of peaceful transfers of power.“It’s bigger than his presidency. It’s going to take a generation working on all this,” said Rahm Emanuel, who was former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff as he entered office during the economic crisis more than a decade ago.“He’ll take the first steps,” Mr. Emanuel said of Mr. Biden. “But you don’t deal with 20 years of change in a week or two. This is a generation’s worth of work.”Mr. Biden — who on Friday repeated his promise to work with Republicans to advance his agenda — now faces the real prospect that Mr. Trump could be standing trial for sedition in the Senate as he takes office.That work begins in earnest in 12 days, and aides to Mr. Biden said he expected lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to get to work quickly, even as the issue of Mr. Trump’s fate dominates the conversation in Washington.The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 8, 2021, 10:32 p.m. ETMore national security officials resign from a White House in turmoil.A judge has blocked Trump’s sweeping restrictions on asylum applications.Josh Hawley faces blowback for role in spurious challenge of election results.Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s steps toward impeaching Mr. Trump a second time came after a surge of anger by members of both parties at what many called an insurrection by the president’s supporters. Mr. Biden on Friday called them “a bunch of thugs, insurrectionists, white supremacists, anti-Semites” who had “the active encouragement of a sitting president of the United States.”But Mr. Biden seemed aware of the political risk of becoming the primary spokesman for the punishment and removal of his predecessor, and the danger that a drawn-out impeachment and trial could delay or derail his hopes for quick passage of his biggest agenda items.He said he might have openly supported impeachment if the Capitol attacks had happened when Mr. Trump had six months left in his term. But he repeatedly suggested that the best way to be rid of the current president was to wait until Mr. Biden is inaugurated.“The question is, what happens with 14 days left to go, or 13 days left to go?” Mr. Biden said, adding later that “I am focused now on us taking control, as president and vice president, on the 20th, and to get our agenda moving as quickly as we can.”The president-elect said he thought the events at the Capitol on Wednesday might serve as a moment that drove people together, and he singled out Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Mitt Romney of Utah, both Republicans, as examples of political adversaries who shared his anger at what had happened.“Many of them are as outraged and disappointed and embarrassed and mortified by the president’s conduct as I am,” Mr. Biden said.But in the same breath, he underscored the divisions that remain in Washington, lashing out at Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, for leading the effort to overturn the election on Mr. Trump’s behalf and for spreading misinformation to the president’s supporters that helped whip them into a frenzy.He said he agreed with some Republicans who have said “how shameful it is the way Ted Cruz and others are dealing with this, how they’re responsible as well for what happened.”When asked whether Mr. Cruz should resign, Mr. Biden said, “I think they should be just flat beaten the next time they run. I think the American public has a real good, clear look at who they are. They are part of the big lie.”Mr. Biden said he was scheduled to unveil his legislative program for addressing the coronavirus crisis and its economic consequences on Thursday, six days before his inauguration as the 46th president.Mr. Biden’s economic team is deep into the process of developing proposals for a second stimulus bill and a larger economic package, including spending on infrastructure and tax increases on the rich. Aides and top congressional Democrats hope to speed the package through Congress once Mr. Biden takes office.“A devastating pandemic, an economic crisis, a country riven by political division and mistrust, institutions badly damaged and global alliances shredded,” said David Axelrod, who served as a political adviser to Mr. Obama during his first two years in the White House. “He has his hands full.”Mr. Biden and his aides have been particularly struck by two grim numbers in the jobs report on Friday: the loss of nearly 500,000 jobs in December in the leisure and hospitality industry, and of thousands of jobs in public education — a warning sign that state budget cuts could further hold back the recovery in months to come.They are particularly focused on direct checks to individuals, a policy that Mr. Biden and Democratic Senate candidates hammered in Georgia’s runoff elections that gave their party control of the chamber, and on efforts to fight the pandemic by accelerating testing for the virus and the deployment of vaccines.The contours of those proposals are beginning to take shape. The stimulus package will include Mr. Biden’s call for an additional $1,400 in direct payments to adults and children who qualified for $600 payments approved in the lame-duck stimulus passed last month, bringing the total benefit to $2,000 per individual.The challenge in steering his stimulus plans through a narrowly divided Senate was on display on Friday, when a moderate Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said that $2,000 direct payments should not be the first priority for legislation and that he would prefer checks to be targeted “to those who need it.”The package will also include additional benefits for the nearly 11 million Americans who are still classified as unemployed by the Labor Department, assistance for renters and help for small business owners, with a focus on businesses owned by women and minorities. It will feature what Mr. Biden promised would be tens of billions of dollars to help schools reopen safely, tens of billions to help state and local governments keep essential workers on the job and “billions of dollars to get vaccines from a vial into someone’s arm.”Leaders in the Senate — like Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, who will lead the Budget Committee, and Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, who will be the chairman of the Finance Committee — said in interviews this week that they were preparing to work quickly with Mr. Biden’s team to draft new economic rescue legislation.Mr. Sanders said that he had spoken to Mr. Biden on Thursday about proposals, and that Mr. Sanders’ staff was already working to flesh out details.“He is, I know, going to be doing everything that he can to address the economic and health care crises facing our country,” Mr. Sanders said of Mr. Biden. “The crisis is of enormous severity, and we’ve got to move as rapidly as we can.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    The December Numbers Were Awful, but the Economy Has a Clear Path to Health

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccination StrategiesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyUpshotSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe December Numbers Were Awful, but the Economy Has a Clear Path to HealthAmong the reasons for optimism: the prospect of widespread vaccination, and a Congress more open to stimulus spending.Jan. 8, 2021Updated 7:08 p.m. ETA construction site in Newark this week. Construction employment is still below its pre-pandemic levels, but the sector added 51,000 jobs in December.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesIt seemed appropriate that the jobs numbers for the final months of 2020 would be as nasty as the year as a whole was.It is fair to say that the loss of 140,000 jobs in December indicates a backsliding of the economic recovery that took place in the summer and fall. Other numbers in Friday’s report confirm that basically gloomy picture, such as the continued depressed share of adults who are in the labor force. In the debate over which letter of the alphabet best describes the pattern of the 2020 economy, the December numbers pretty much rule out “V.”But. But.The details of this report, combined with everything else swirling around in economic policy and the financial markets, make for a more optimistic case. There is an opportunity for 2021 to be the year of a remarkable bounce-back, thanks to monetary and fiscal stimulus; the delayed effects of buoyant markets over the last few months; and above all the prospect of widespread coronavirus vaccination.The December numbers point to a jobs crisis that is contained to sectors dealing with the direct effects of pandemic-related shutdowns. Unlike the data from the spring of 2020, the latest numbers are not consistent with the sort of broad-based absence of demand in the economy that caused the recovery from the last few recessions to be so long and so slow.The steepest December job losses were in leisure and hospitality, a sector that shed 498,000 positions. Consider what that number represents: countless restaurants, hotels, and performance stages and arenas shuttered; and hundreds of thousands of people back on the jobless rolls and unsure when they’ll be able to resume work.The good news is we know how and when those jobs can come back. If enough Americans are vaccinated, they will probably feel comfortable in returning to normal patterns of leisure activity. An outright boom in those sectors is plausible later this year. Americans’ savings are through the roof, and it is easy to imagine pent-up demand for travel, concerts and the like. More

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    December Jobs Report: Recovery Goes Into Reverse

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesCalls for Impeachment25th Amendment ExplainedTrump Officials ResignHow Mob Stormed CapitolAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJobs Recovery Goes Into Reverse as Pandemic Takes a New TollU.S. employment fell by 140,000 in December as virus cases surged. Leisure and hospitality businesses were hit hard, but some industries showed growth. More

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    Fed Officials Debated Rate Liftoff in 2015, Offering Lessons for Today

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Jobs CrisisCurrent Unemployment RateThe First Six MonthsPermanent LayoffsWhen a $600 Lifeline EndedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFed Officials Debated Rate Liftoff in 2015, Offering Lessons for TodayThe Federal Reserve raised rates from near zero in 2015. The discussion back then — and developments since — will inform their future policy.The Federal Reserve Board building in Washington. The central bank raised rates in 2015 as the unemployment rate dropped.Credit…Ting Shen for The New York TimesJan. 8, 2021Updated 2:24 p.m. ETThe Federal Reserve lifted interest rates from near zero in 2015 after years of holding them at rock bottom following the 2008 global financial crisis. Transcripts from their policy discussions, released Friday, show just how fraught that decision was.The debate that played out then is especially relevant now, when the central bank has again slashed interest rates practically to zero, this time to fight the pandemic-induced economic downturn. The concerns that officials voiced over lifting rates in 2015 — that inflation would not pick up, and that the labor market had further to heal — proved prescient in ways that will inform policy setting in the years to come.The Fed, under Chair Janet L. Yellen, raised its policy rate in 2015 as the unemployment rate dropped. Officials worried that if they waited too long to nudge borrowing costs higher, they would stoke an economic overheating that would push inflation higher and prove hard to contain.The logic, at the time, was that monetary policy works with “long and variable” lags, and that it was better to start to gently normalize policy before rapid price gains actually showed up.But even back then, not everyone on the Fed’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee was comfortable with the plan. When the decision to lift interest rates came in December, Governor Lael Brainard seemed to question it — arguing that the labor market still had room to expand and that inflation was coming in short of the committee’s 2 percent goal. She ultimately voted for the decision alongside Ms. Yellen and her fellow policymakers.“The recent price data give little hint that this undershooting of our target will end any time soon,” Ms. Brainard said of inflation at the time, according to the transcript. That, paired with risks from a slowdown overseas, made her place “somewhat greater weight on the possible regret associated with tightening too early than on the possible regret associated with waiting a little longer.”In explaining that she would vote for the increase anyway, Ms. Brainard said she placed “a very high premium on ensuring the credibility of monetary policy” and appreciated the thoughtful process Ms. Yellen and the staff had undergone in planning to change the policy. She suggested in 2019 that moving rates up in 2015 was a mistake, and that “a better alternative would have been to delay liftoff until we had achieved our targets.”Stanley Fischer, the vice chairman at the time, laid out a concise explanation of why the committee was moving.“Why move now?” he said. “First, as the chair has emphasized, our actions become effective with a lag. Second, there are some signs of accumulating financial stability problems. And, third, the signal we will be sending will reinforce the fact that our economic situation is continuing to normalize.”Jerome H. Powell, then a Fed governor and now the chair, said at the time that remaining room for labor market gains was “probably modest” but highly uncertain, and that the participation rate — which measures people working or looking for work — might rebound.“I’m not in any hurry to conclude that the current low level of participation reflects immutable structural factors,” Mr. Powell said. “I think it’s likely to be necessary for the economy to run above trend for some time to ensure that inflation does reach our 2 percent target.”The more reluctant stances aged comparatively well. In the time since then, many economists and analysts have viewed the Fed’s pre-emptive rate increases as possibly premature. The unemployment rate continued to drop for years, but as more workers entered the job market, wages increased only moderately. Price gains remained stable, and actually a bit softer than Fed officials were hoping.As a result, the Fed has reassessed how it sets monetary policy. Mr. Powell said last year that he and his colleagues would now focus on “shortfalls” from full employment — worrying only if the job market is coming in weak, not if it’s coming in strong, as long as inflation is contained.They no longer plan to raise interest rates to fend off inflation before it shows up, officials have said, paving the way for longer periods of lower rates.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More