For the third time since start of the recession, the number of new claims for unemployment for the week ending 9/5/20 was below the 1,000,000 mark. For contrast, before the government induced shutdown of the economy, new claims averaged about 220,000 per week.
On the other hand, the number of new claims was flat for the week – the damage from the shutdown in terms of new claims did not go down.
As I continue to sort out for myself what this means, will keep listing the stats I’m tracking.
The number of new claims for unemployment and number drawing unemployment is provided by Department of Labor. I calculated the net change, which I assume represents the number of new jobs, although could also be that people dropping out of the job market could wash into that number:
Circumstances are now to the point in the state of California, and three counties in particular, where we can say that the government is now persecuting the Church. This presents itself as counties going after three specific congregations, but when you look at the details you see a broader pattern in play.
A few updates to previous posts before getting to the main discussion.
The County of Los Angeles has unilaterally canceled the lease on land which provides something in the range of 40% or 50% of parking capacity for Grace Community Church. Oh, the lease has been in place for 45 years.
North Valley Baptist Church is now facing $52,000 in fines for the heinous offense of worshiping indoors. Keep in mind this is the church which was visited by spies from the county. It certainly appears that Santa Clara is acting like the Stasi back in about old days of East Germany. The pastor declared “We Are Not Closing down This Church” – California Pastor Warns Officials.
The article also provides the biblical explanation for standing up to unbiblical government rules.
These efforts will ultimately fail.
There may be short-term successes for the government.
There may be intermediate-term successes.
These efforts will fail.
Standing up for constitutional rights in court.
Los Angeles County doesn’t realize they have taken on a church that will not back down. I will make an easy guess that Grace Community Church will put whatever effort in time and dollars that it takes to stand up in court even if it involves going to state appeal court, then federal appeal, then US Supreme Court.
After shooting from 3.4% in February to 14.7% in April, the headline unemployment rate has dropped to 8.4% in August.
You will interpret the statistics as you wish.
Looks to me like people are slowing getting back to work after the shock of the pandemic and follow-on government-ordered shutdown of the economy.
There are six different measures of unemployment, each providing a slightly different perspective. Put them all together for a more complex picture the economy.
At the top is a graph since 2007 of U-3, the headline statistic, along with U-6, the broadest stat which includes discouraged workers, marginally attached, and those working part time because they can’t find full time work.
For a closer picture, focus in on the stats since January 2019:
What the California economy might look like by the time it is allowed to reopen. Photo of abandoned farm in North Dakota by James Ulvog.
This is the third in a series of posts describing the damage caused by shutting down the economy. First post discussed recent news on economic damage. Second post described ongoing health damage.
Some things are *not* going wrong
Just under half a million people attended the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota from August 7 through 16.
Check out any of the pictures from the rally and you will notice a distinct lack of masks and social distancing.
Expectations in most media sources were for this event to produce massive amounts of infection.
Half a million people. In one town.
The tracking results are in from the massive numbers of people who were infected and the resulting fatalities from this massive event.
It is shocking. Amazing. Head-shaking. Astounding.
Best info available is that:
196 people tested positive for COVID with results linked to attending Sturgis.
4 people died.
To put that in context, 5 people died of motorcycle accidents in Sturgis during the rally.
Growing awareness something is wrong with lockdowns
8/24/20 – Wall Street Journal – New Thinking on COVID Lockdowns: They are Overly Blunt and Costly – Article has a massive amount of information on the course of the pandemic, wide range of strategies by national and state governments, and large volume of statistics. The story is told basically scrambled egg style with no pattern or trends or storylines that I can easily summarize.
Study by the British organization compared data from July 2019 to June 2020.
They found 19.2% of adults were experiencing depression in June 2020 compared to 9.7% in July 2019. That is a doubling as a result of the pandemic.
Severity of the rise can be seen by 6.2% of the population that had ongoing depression, 12.9% developed moderate to severe depression during the pandemic, and 3.5% some improvement during that time.
Is there any doubt that the overwhelming portion of that increase is due to the isolation and economic damage caused by the government ordered shutdowns?
An interesting exercise is to put that data into table as follows:
What the California economy might look like by the time it is allowed to reopen. Photo of abandoned farm in North Dakota by James Ulvog.
Over the last several weeks I have accumulated a number of articles describing the economic and health damage caused by the government ordered shutdown of the economy.
I’ve been wanting to post these for a while. In light of the California government imposing more severe constraints on when the economy will be allowed to start functioning again, it is now time to publish.
Economic damage
7/30/20 – Wall Street Journal – US Economy Contracted at Record Rate last Quarter; Jobless Claims Rise to 1.43 million – The preliminary estimate of the collapse in the US economy for the second quarter came in at an annualized 32.9% drop. Again, that is annualized. In addition, it will be revised in each of the next two months as additional data is gathered by the feds.
That follows an annualized drop of 5% in the first quarter.
I was going to extend this two-part series to three, adding on an upbeat explanation that when counties go after the Church the government is destined to fail. Reference to Church with an upper case C refers to the worldwide church, the universal, invisible body of Christ instead of meaning one particular local congregation.
Planned for the next post to give a small illustration expanding out to wider examples in history and then going back to New Testament illustrations.
Then a news report yesterday about petty retaliation from Los Angeles County interrupted, showing I need a different post as the next discussion.
So, for your daily dose of shake-my-head amazement, consider…
Update: Decided to make this a 3 part series. Next post – the effort to suppress religious freedom will not succeed.
Efforts to restrict the first amendment right of free expression of religion are growing in strength here in California. At least three counties are participating in the effort.
Pastor John MacArthur and Grace Community Church are standing in the gap, but other churches are also receiving pressure including planted spies, as discussed below. This is second article in this specific series.
Previous post gave recap of enforcement efforts against Grace Community Church. At end of this post there is a great comment from the GCC elders why the state dictacts are a direct restriction of religious expression
The efforts by the state of California and at least three counties in the state to restrict the first amendment right of free expression of religion are growing in strength.
Pastor John MacArthur and Grace Community Church are standing in the gap, but other churches are also receiving pressure, including planted spies. This is first article in this specific series.
Next post will give a concise explanation why prohibiting indoor worship, limiting worship size, and banning singing are direct restrictions on religious freedom.
In my humble opinion, the county does not yet know that in picking on GCC, they have targeted a church that will not back down when they have made up their mind. I predict there is a small but measurable chance this case could wind up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
8/20/20 – The Roys Reports – Julie Roys –Judge Rejects Request o Hold John MacArthur & Grace Community Church in Contempt– In the LA County Superior Court (that would be the initial trial court for proceedings) a judge refused to issue a contempt order for Pr. MacArthur and GCC. Also refused to impose $20,000 of fines.
Article gives recap of the legal efforts targeting GCC:
Unemployed business people. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
For the first time since 4/4/20, the number of new claims for unemployment increased for the 8/15/20 reporting date. Oddly, the increase of 109K is small for the time of pandemic but would be equal to about 4 weeks of new claims before the pandemic hit.
As I continue to sort out what this means, I’ll continue giving the same stats as provided for recent weeks.
Since the middle of June, which is when I started tracking this metric, the number of new jobs has exceeded the newly lost jobs by 5 million.
Looks to me like these stats suggest the economy is recovery, but at a slow pace, with unprecedented numbers of people still out of work at the same time as an extremely high number of new claims for unemployment are still rolling in.
The number of people drawing unemployment the number of new claims, and the resulting number of new jobs:
“Three very definite propositions were set out in its (the Declaration of Independence) preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that
all men are created equal,
that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that
therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.” (emphasis added)
He explained these issues are settled, resolved, final.
We can expand on those ideas. We need to bring them into further fruition. We can dive deeper into their meaning.
Setting them aside or replacing them means we go backwards. Declaring they are no longer true is regression to the ancient past.
More eloquently than I could ever describe, the president said:
“About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”
Two hundred forty-four years ago today marked the start of this wonderful, aspirational, fantastic, heaven-blessed, messy, delightful, powerful, flawed, and glorious experiment called the United States of America which has delivered unimaginable levels of freedom to hundreds of millions of people here in the US of A and contributed massively to the freedom of hundreds and hundreds of millions more around the world.
That experiment had multiple severe flaws baked into the design which are taking a long time to correct, yet the aspirational dreams then drove and still drive that wonderful experiment to constant improvement.
Before our independence, anything resembling a democracy had been absent for so many long centuries. Apart from the ruling elite, ordinary people were merely the subjects of their ‘betters.’ Common folk only had the very few rights and freedoms that those born to power consented to give them, like crumbs thrown from the table. You and I would only have been able to do what those controlling us allowed us to do.
And then came those rabble-rousing founding fathers.
The results of this grand experiment in self-government, not tried before, has produced fabulous results.
(How to put that information together? Well, the reason I’m blogging is to put my thoughts into writing, which forces me to think deeper in order to sort out what is going on around me.)
The U-3 unemployment rate in last four months with change from previous month:
march
4.4
april
14.7
10.3
may
13.3
(1.4)
june
11.1
(2.2)
That is a 2.6% drop in two months after a 10.3% rise in April.
Wow.
Graph above shows key unemployment rates since the start of 2019.
This discussion will be posted at several of my blogs.
For longer term perspective, consider the rates since before the Great Recession:
New unemployment claims for week ending 6/27/20 were 1.427M, down slightly from 1.480M the previous week. That is five weeks of between 1.4M and 1.9M following ten weeks of between 2.1M and 6.9M new claims.
The impact of new claims is mitigated by the number of people getting rehired which leads to the calculation of ongoing payments for unemployment.
20.29M revised down from 20.5M- 6/13/20
19.23M revised down from 19.52M – 6/20/20
19.29M – 6/27/20 (a rare and exquisitely unexpected typo refers to this as the 6/20 week)
That shows the number of people finding new jobs is running higher than the number of people losing their jobs.
This discussion will be posted at several of my blogs.
