IMPORTS, NEW UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS BOTH REMAIN HIGH

The U.S. economy lost a net 140,000 jobs in December, the first net loss since April. Economists had forecast a 50,000-job gain.
Once again, the leisure and hospitality industry – including hotels, bars, and restaurants – showed the greatest losses, hitting particularly hard among young, minority, and less-educated workers, labor economist Julia Pollack at ZipRecruiter noted to the Wall Street Journal.
Social restrictions stemming from the spiking rate of COVID cases cut 372,000 jobs from dining and drinking establishments.
Unemployment among Hispanics, which made up 28 percent of the country’s food service workers in 2019, rose from 8.4 to 9.3 percent; the Black jobless rate edged down last month but remained higher than that for any racial group.
The official unemployment rate held firm in December at 6.7 percent, and the number of workers who have stopped looking for jobs or who are working part-time but want full-time work declined from 12 percent to 11.7, the U.S. Labor Department reported.
More recently, about 787,000 new claims for unemployment benefits from regular state programs were filed during the week of 2 January, down a fractional 3,000 from the week before as that figure was revised upward by 3,000.
New unemployment claims have been holding steady around 800,000 a week for much of the autumn and winter.
The number of new weekly claims is widely viewed as a barometer of layoffs.
Manufacturing added 38,000 jobs as consumers shifted spending from services such as travel and dining out to goods such as cars, appliances, and furniture. The health care and logistics industries are hiring legions to produce and distribute COVID vaccines; Catalent, a New Jersey recruiting firm, reported offering $4,000 signing bonuses to draw applicants.
However, most U.S. jobs are in services, where employment is still not growing its way past the economic crisis.
The figure from 2 January continues November’s weakness, when household incomes declined again and household spending also decreased for the first time in seven months, the U.S. Commerce Department reported.
During 2020, 9.37 million jobs disappeared from the nation’s economy, the most in any year since 1939 and almost twice as many as the 5.05 million lost in 2009 during the depths of the Great Recession. About 22 million workers were laid off last year, and the economy added back only 9.4 million jobs in April through June, with slower monthly gains since then.
This month, the U.S. Labor Department also revised upward the peak of the nation’s 2020 jobless rate in April, nudging it from 14.7 percent to 14.8.
Trade War Lost
Meanwhile, in November, the U.S. trade deficit in goods grew to a level not seen since 1992. Imports of appliances, cell phones, jewelry, and toys led to the increase. The overall deficit in goods and services widened 8 percent from October, reaching a span unequaled since August 2006.
“It’s been a very unequal pandemic economy,” Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James, said to the Journal. The lower-wage workers bearing the brunt of the layoffs typically spend little beyond necessities, he noted. In contrast, the top 20 percent of earners have felt little damage from the economic crisis and continue to spend.
But “if we get vaccines rolled out, then we’re in line for a significant rebound in the second half of the year,” Brown thinks.
Economist Alfredo Romero at North Carolina A&T State University told the Journal he expects the U.S. to see a net job loss over the next few months and will not begin to add jobs back until the vaccine has been widely administered.
“It’s now a race between the speed of vaccinations and the speed of contagion,” he said.
TREND FORECAST: We note the above quotes to illustrate the belief on The Street that the economic devastation inflicted upon the economy, which has destroyed businesses, lives, and livelihoods, will suddenly spring back to life when “vaccines roll out” and how fast “the speed of vaccinations” are injected into the population.
Again, we find this to be a simplistic, narrow assessment of the greater socio-economic and geopolitical damage inflicted on society by the COVID War.
“War” is what politicians referred to in their fighting the virus when they launched it last year. As we illustrated back then with our Trends Journal cover from 28 April, just as the people were dumb enough to believe Bush’s wars, they were and still are dumb enough to believe the COVID War.

We also made it 100 percent clear that just as they have an unblemished track record of starting wars and having no exit strategy (Korean War, Vietnam War, Afghan War, Iraq War, Syrian War, Libyan War, Yemen War, etc.), the politicians across the globe who launched the COVID War have no exit strategy.
Indeed, just yesterday, America’s beloved and highly-touted COVID General, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo – whose state ranks more COVID deaths (39,808) and higher per capita death rate (204) than all but one state and most nations of the world – declared, “We will win the COVID War, and we will learn from the experience.”
Win? As a result of the lockdowns, the state has raked up a projected $8.7 billion deficit. And now the state’s politicians, who get paid by stealing money in the name of taxes, are planning to impose new rounds of taxes.
Learn from the experience? Imposing draconian lockdowns such as destroying the New York City restaurant business despite a virus infection rate of 1.43 percent.
Learn from the experience? Pushing Manhattan’s apartment vacancy rate to 13.3 percent in the third quarter of last year to the highest number in 24 years according to Cushman & Wakefield.
Learn from the experience? With only some 15 percent of people working in offices, all the business that depends on commuters is being destroyed, and tax revenues from those businesses have vanished.
Learn from the experience? Performing perfectly well with his daily broadcasts of selling steady streams of fear and hysteria, Cuomo received an Emmy award for his acting role from other actors.
Yes, the COVID War!
As we wrote when it was launched last year, just as the people marched off to Mussolini, saluted Stalin, and heiled Hitler, they obediently marched off to the COVID War.