Unemployment

Nearly 107 Million Americans Do Not Have A Job Right Now

A lot of people are really confused about the state of the U.S. economy right now.  Large employers are conducting mass layoffs all over the country, and those that are searching for work are having a very difficult time.  But meanwhile, the Biden administration and the mainstream media continue to insist that the unemployment rate is low and everything is just fine.  So what can account for such incongruity?  Hopefully by the time you are done reading this article you will have a much clearer view of what is really going on out there.

On Friday, the BLS released the employment numbers for the month of February.  Zero Hedge is calling it “the most ridiculous jobs report in history”…

Last month we though that the January jobs report was the “most ridiculous in recent history” but, boy, were we wrong because this morning the Biden department of goalseeked propaganda (aka BLS) published the February jobs report, and holy crap was that something else. Even Goebbels would blush.

We were told that the U.S. economy added 275,000 jobs last month.

But if you dig deeper into the report, you will find that the number of native-born workers actually fell by 560,000 last month.

And over the past 3 months, the number of native-born workers has fallen by a whopping 2.4 million…

But wait there’s even more, because now that the primary season is over and we enter the heart of election season and political talking points will be thrown around left and right, especially in the context of the immigration crisis created intentionally by the Biden administration which is hoping to import millions of new Democratic voters (maybe the US can hold the presidential election in Honduras or Guatemala, after all it is their citizens that will be illegally casting the key votes in November), what we find is that in February, the number of native-born workers tumbled again, sliding by a massive 560K to just 129.807 million. Add to this the December data, and we get a near-record 2.4 million plunge in native-born workers in just the past 3 months (only the covid crash was worse)!

So where is the “job growth” coming from?

If you can believe it, the BLS is claiming that 1.2 million foreign-born workers were added during the month of February alone…

The offset? A record 1.2 million foreign-born (read immigrants, both legal and illegal but mostly illegal) workers added in February!

Are we actually supposed to believe such nonsense?

I find it hard to believe that more than a million foreign-born workers were added to the system in a single month when layoffs are at such extremely high levels.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas we just witnessed the highest number of layoffs during the month of February since the Great Recession…

Layoff announcements in February hit their highest level for the month since the global financial crisis, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The total of 84,638 planned cuts showed an increase of 3% from January and 9% from the same month a year ago, with technology and finance companies at the forefront.

From a historical perspective, this was the worst February since 2009, which saw 186,350 announcements as the worst of the financial crisis was seemingly coming to an end.

We really do have an employment crisis in this country, but those in positions of power are trying to convince us that what we can see with our own two eyes isn’t actually real.

In other words, they are gaslighting us really hard.

One of the ways they do this is by how they classify those that are not working.

When an adult is not working, they are classified as either “unemployed” or “not in the labor force”.

In February, 6,458,000 Americans were considered to be officially “unemployed”.

If that number was accurate, that would be good news.

But another 100,285,000 Americans were considered to be “not in the labor force” in February.

When you add those two numbers together, you get a grand total of 106,743,000 Americans that are not working.

In other words, nearly 107 million Americans do not have a job right now.

Let me try to put that number into proper perspective.

During the Great Recession, that number never even reached 90 million.

So right now, the number of Americans not working is far higher than it was at any point during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Meanwhile, conditions continue to get even rougher for those that are actually working.

The cost of living has been rising much faster than our paychecks have, and that is putting enormous stress on households from coast to coast.

Recently, I was stunned to learn that a 160 square foot home in Las Vegas is renting for 950 dollars a month…

A tiny home in the Las Vegas Valley is creating a big stir.

Nestled between two apartment blocks, the 160 sq ft tiny home, listed for $950 a month, has received more than 113 inquiries from eager renters.

That is absurd.

But this is what years of reckless money printing have done to us.

Housing has become more unaffordable than ever before, and this isn’t just happening in our heavily populated metropolitan areas.

If you can believe it, an average home in Bozeman, Montana now sells for more than a million dollars…

Bozeman, Montana, a small city of about 56,000 people, has seen home prices soar on the back of increased migration to the area, catapulting demand for properties.

A single-family home in the area rose by nearly 40 percent to more than $1.16 million as of February, according to the Bozeman Real Estate Group.

At the same time, paychecks are stagnating or even falling in some cases.

In fact, it is being reported that “48% of 2,000 US companies surveyed lowered pay for certain roles” in 2023…

But some are finding an unwelcome surprise as they scan listings for open roles. A salary bump is all but impossible; in many cases, wages seem lower than their previous pay – even for the same jobs.

They aren’t imagining things. A 2023 report on pay trends from ZipRecruiter showed 48% of 2,000 US companies surveyed lowered pay for certain roles.

The middle class is being systematically ripped to shreds.

With each passing day, more Americans are joining the ranks of the poor, and homelessness and hunger are absolutely exploding all over the nation.

What we are experiencing is the direct result of years of very foolish policies.

Unfortunately, much worse is on the horizon.  The remainder of 2024 will be excruciating, and 2025 will be even more painful.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  You can connect with Michael on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and sharing his articles on your own social media accounts is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

This Is The Weirdest Employment Market That We Have Ever Seen

Things just continue to get crazier and crazier.  In all of the years that I have been writing about the economy, I have never seen anything like this.  The latest employment report that was released on Friday is being described as a “huge disappointment” because the number of Americans that were hired last month was way, way below expectations.  Employment only rose by 235,000, but economists were expecting a number about triple that size.  Normally when this sort of thing happens it is because of a lack of available jobs.  But that is definitely not the case right now.  There are literally millions upon millions of jobs that are open, but for a variety of reasons people simply don’t want them.

A lot of experts are blaming COVID for the “worker shortage”, and without a doubt fear of COVID is causing some potential workers to stay home.

In other cases, mask mandates and vaccine mandates are causing people to reject open jobs that they would otherwise accept.

But I don’t think that those are the biggest reasons for the “worker shortage”.

The types of jobs where we are seeing the most severe shortages of workers are jobs that require long hours and hard physical work.  These days, there are millions upon millions of Americans that just don’t want to drive trucks, load trains, stock shelves or work at our ports.

Unfortunately, the machinery of our economy comes grinding to a halt without such workers, and we are seeing that right now.

These days, millions of Americans would rather stay home and collect government benefits rather than work a difficult low paying job.  In fact, the numbers clearly show that unemployed workers are going back to work much faster in states where enhanced unemployment benefits have been cut off.

That is an easy problem for our politicians to fix, but we are facing another growing trend that won’t be so easy to rectify.

Our young people are increasingly gravitating to the “Internet economy”.  They are figuring out that it doesn’t make much sense to put in endless hours at an entry level job when so many others are making big bucks as “social media influencers” instead.

During this pandemic, the White House has invited quite a few top “social media influencers” to the White House, but I don’t think that they have invited a single truck driver.

Of course there are others that have made millions upon millions of dollars buying and selling cryptocurrencies.

Nobody is ever going to become a millionaire unloading container ships, but tons of people have become millionaires by trading cryptos or by becoming social media celebrities.

So why should our young people choose to do the low paying work that nobody else wants to do, when the Internet offers so many other promising opportunities?

I believe that this is the biggest reason why the number of Americans that are employed is still more than 5 million less than it was just prior to the start of the pandemic…

Nearly a year and a half into the recovery, the US economy remains 5.3 million jobs short of where it was in February 2020, before Covid-19 threw a wrench into the gears.

It has been reported that there are currently 9.8 million job openings in the United States.

If you want a job, you can go out and find one.

But the vast majority of the jobs that are available are low paying jobs that are not particularly pleasant.

And the rampant inflation that we are now experiencing is rapidly causing those jobs to lose the limited appeal that they once had.

In a desperate attempt to keep their low paid workforce, officials at Walmart just announced that they will be raising wages for hundreds of thousands of workers…

Walmart is raising the pay for more than 565,000 store employees.

The world’s largest retailer announced Thursday that U.S. store workers in its frontend, food and consumable, and general merchandise workgroups will receive at least a $1 an hour raise.

Elsewhere, a McDonald’s in Oregon has now decided to hire kids as young as 14 after raising wages to 15 dollars an hour did not work…

Businesses across the country are turning to teens as young as 14 to cope with a dire labor shortage, with one McDonald’s in Oregon drawing attention with a huge banner touting the new policy.

The McDonald’s franchise in Medford hung the banner after finding that raising the minimum wage to $15 didn’t bring in many new applications, but opening the door to younger applicants did, operator Heather Coleman told Business Insider.

And earlier today I was stunned to learn that Amazon has decided to start recruiting pot smokers to drive their delivery vehicles…

But it’s not just Amazon’s in-house workforce that needs expanding. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Amazon has found a solution for the contract delivery drivers it uses to deliver packages from its fulfillment centers to customers’ doorsteps: Recruit pot smokers.

That’s right: despite the fact that driving while high on any substance is illegal, the company is advising its delivery partners to prominently advertise that they don’t screen applicants for marijuana use, according to emails between Amazon and contractors reviewed by Bloomberg.

But no matter what these companies do, it is just going to be really tough to recruit low paid workers in this environment because our leaders have flooded the system with so much cash.

Young people will continue to gravitate toward opportunities on the Internet that they think will make them rich, but meanwhile the machinery of our economy will continue to break down.

The widespread shortages that we have been witnessing just continue to get worse, and earlier today the Wall Street Journal ran a big story about the nightmare that the U.S. auto industry is currently facing…

The U.S. auto industry is heading into one of its biggest selling weekends of the year with dealership lots stripped bare of inventory and some buyers having to drive great distances to secure a new ride.

For a second year in a row, car shoppers are facing bleak prospects in trying to buy a car this Labor Day weekend. The period has historically been a time of blowout deals and big sales events for car companies and dealerships trying to clear out old vehicle stock to make way for the new model year.

On a very basic level, we need workers that will build stuff, move stuff and sell stuff.

Unfortunately, those jobs just aren’t very appealing today.

But if you think that you may want a job at some point in the foreseeable future, I would encourage you to grab one while you still can.

Because this current state of affairs will certainly not last indefinitely, and it won’t be too long before we see some pretty dramatic shifts in the employment marketplace.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written five others that are available on Amazon.com including  “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

Millions Of Low Paying “Jobs” Are Available, But Most Americans Can’t Afford To Take Them

There are more job openings in the United States than ever before, but the vast majority of the available “jobs” pay so little that most Americans don’t want them.  If working extremely long hours for some employer is not even going to lift you out of poverty, then you are probably better off taking whatever government assistance that you can get until a decent paying job eventually comes along.  For example, if you get a job that pays 10 dollars an hour and you work full-time hours every week, you will earn somewhere around $1,600 a month before taxes.  Needless to say, you can’t survive in most U.S. cities on $1,600 a month these days.  It would have been tough to make it on $1,600 a month before the pandemic, but now we are in a highly inflationary environment.  Housing costs are absolutely skyrocketing, health insurance premiums are at extremely ridiculous levels and food prices have been rising aggressively.  The higher the cost of living gets, the less attractive low paying jobs are going to become.

Having said that, it is still good news that the number of job openings is sitting at a record high right now…

Job openings in the U.S. rose slightly in May to a record 9.21 million, reflecting an insatiable demand for labor as the economy fully reopens and businesses scramble to keep up with soaring sales for their goods and services.

The number of available jobs has set a record for three straight months. Job openings had fallen to as low as 4.6 million last year after the coronavirus pandemic briefly shut down much of the economy.

Having lots of jobs available is better than not having a lot of jobs available, but of course the vast majority of those “jobs” could not support a middle class lifestyle for an average American family.

Some have been using the term “labor shortage” to describe what is going on out there, but in reality what we are really facing is a shortage of jobs that people are actually willing to work.

Even though there are supposedly so many “jobs” available at this moment, the unemployment rate in this country actually went up last month…

“There’s simply no labor shortage when you’re talking about finding house cleaners for a hotel — there is a shortage of workers who want to work at what you’re offering,” said Sylvia Allegretto, a UC Berkeley labor economist. She said the country is experiencing a “wage and benefits shortage.”

A labor shortage implies there aren’t enough available workers to fill open jobs, but this is not the case nationally, or in California. National unemployment in June was 5.9%, up from 5.8% in May, in part because the number of people looking for jobs grew, according to data from the Labor Department on Friday. California’s unemployment is tracking higher, at 7.9% in May.

Of course it doesn’t help that being unemployed pays quite handsomely in many states these days.

If you can make more money doing nothing, it simply doesn’t make sense to work.

In order to encourage more people to work, many large chains in the restaurant industry are now raising wages substantially…

Job openings in the accommodation and food services sector increased from 1.16 million in April to 1.25 million in May.

To entice workers to stay — and to hire more people — restaurants have been raising wages. Darden Restaurants (DRI), which owns Olive Garden, announced in March that it is hiking pay. McDonald’s (MCD), too, announced wage hikes for employees at corporate-owned stores in May. Others have done the same.

Large corporate chains can do this because they have deep pockets.

But millions of small businesses all over the country that deeply struggled during the pandemic are not in the same position.

Ultimately, a lot of small business owners find themselves doing more and more of the work themselves because they simply can’t find enough people to work for the wages that they are offering.  Here is just one example…

Jarvis Young, who owns a Papa John’s in Los Angeles with his wife, is struggling to staff up at all levels, from managers to delivery drivers. He employs 16 workers and said he needs closer to 23.

He has started borrowing employees from other Papa John’s franchises to keep up with demand. Until they hire one, his wife is acting as the general manager. The two of them sometimes deliver pizzas — not quite what they envisioned for themselves as franchise owners. “At the end of the day, this is our business,” he said.

Today, there are tens of millions of Americans that are considered to be among the “working poor”, and that number is growing with each passing day.

The cost of living is rising far faster than our paychecks are, and an increasing number of Americans are not even able to afford the basics.

For instance, everyone needs a place to live.  Unfortunately, home prices have surged so dramatically this year that the percentage of Americans that say that it is a “bad time to buy a home” has risen to the highest level ever recorded…

The percentage who said that it was a “bad time to buy a home” spiked over the past three months from record to record and in June hit 64%. Consumers cited home prices as the predominant reason.

A record low 32% of the respondents said that it was still a good time to buy a home, while the percentage of fence-sitters who didn’t know dropped to 4%.

And just trying to buy enough food to eat is becoming a challenge for a lot of people.

When I went to the grocery store this week, I was stunned to see how high prices had become.  Of course some manufacturers are trying to hide price increases by shrinking the sizes of their packages, and this is something that NPR did an article on the other day…

A couple of weeks ago, Edgar Dworsky walked into a Stop & Shop grocery store in Somerville, Mass., like a detective entering a murder scene.

He stepped into the cereal aisle, where he hoped to find the smoking gun. He scanned the shelves. Oh no, he thought. He was too late. The store had already replaced old General Mills cereal boxes — such as Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs — with newer ones. It was as though the suspect’s fingerprints had been wiped clean.

But Dworsky’s story didn’t end there.  He decided to check out the back of the store, and it was there that he discovered what he was searching for...

Then Dworsky headed toward the back of the store. Sure enough, old boxes of Cocoa Puffs and Apple Cinnamon Cheerios were stacked at the end of one of the aisles. He grabbed an old box of Cocoa Puffs and put it side by side with the new one. Aha! The tip he had received was right on the money. General Mills had downsized the contents of its “family size” boxes from 19.3 ounces to 18.1 ounces.

Dworsky went to the checkout aisle, and both boxes — gasp! — were the same price. It was an open-and-shut case: General Mills is yet another perpetrator of “shrinkflation.”

As I discussed a few days ago, we are going to be in a high inflation environment for the foreseeable future.

That means that low paying jobs will just become less and less attractive.

So employers can boast that they have as many “job openings” as they want, but if wage growth continues to lag way behind the real rate of inflation most of those jobs will continue to remain empty.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

Why Is The Mainstream Media Suddenly Freaking Out About The Horrifying Inflation That Is Ahead Of Us?

Have you noticed that the corporate media has suddenly become obsessed with rising prices over the past week or so?  Day after day, mainstream news outlets are barraging us with stories about inflation, and even CNN is occasionally taking a break from bashing Republicans to cover this.  Earlier today, I was directed to a CNN article entitled “Prices are rising everywhere you look”, and I decided to read it.  Surprisingly, this was one CNN article that would actually pass an impartial fact check.  We really are seeing very painful inflation throughout the entire economy, and this is causing many to recall the days of “stagflation” under Jimmy Carter in the 1970s.

But the corporate media doesn’t exactly have a long track record of being straight with us.

So why are they seemingly being honest with us in this case?

Is it that this crisis has now become so obvious that nobody can deny it any longer, or is there another agenda at work?

I wish that I had an answer to that question.  If you go to Google News and type “inflation” into the search bar, you will get page after page after page of recent articles about rising prices.  To me, food inflation is one of the greatest concerns because it hits average American families particularly hard.  And at this point, even the price of apples is rising quite dramatically…

Costs for apples are up 10% to 20% depending on the variety, said Mike Ferguson, vice president of produce and floral at Topco Associates LLC, an Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based cooperative of more than 40 food companies including grocer Wegmans Food Markets Inc. Bananas and leafy greens are more expensive too, Topco said, while vegetable oils and oil-heavy products like salad dressing and mayonnaise are also getting pricier in part because of higher ingredient prices.

“Our overall goal is to cover cost increases,” said Jon Moeller, operating chief at Procter & Gamble Co. Procter & Gamble is raising prices on baby products, adult diapers and feminine-care brands.

For a while, some food producers tried to swallow the cost increases that they were experiencing, but that could only go on for so long.

Now many of those cost increases are being passed on to consumers, and the CEO of Kellogg is admitting that he hasn’t seen this sort of inflation “in many, many years”…

Kellogg Co., maker of Frosted Flakes, Cheez-Its and Pringles, said Thursday that higher costs for ingredients, labor and shipping are pushing it and other food makers to raise prices. “We haven’t seen this type of inflation in many, many years,” Chief Executive Officer Steve Cahillane said.

But at least food prices are not going up as fast as used vehicle prices have been rising.  The following comes from Wolf Richter…

This has been going on for months: Used-vehicle prices spiking from jaw-dropper to jaw-dropper, and just when I thought prices couldn’t possibly spike further, they do.

Prices of used vehicles that were sold at auctions around the US in April spiked by 8.3% from March, by 20% year-to-date, by 54% from April 2020, and by 40% from April 2019, according to the Used Vehicle Value Index released today by Manheim, the largest auto auction operator in the US and a unit of Cox Automotive.

A 54 percent increase in 12 months?

That is insane.

And the Fed still has the gall to insist that inflation has been “low”.

I have written quite a few articles about how home prices have been soaring into the stratosphere, and now rents are escalating rapidly as well.

In fact, one of the largest landlords in America just raised rents on vacant properties by 11 percent…

On Thursday, American Homes 4 Rent, which owns 54,000 houses, increased rents 11% on vacant properties in April, the company reported in a statement

All throughout the economy we see prices going up by double digits.

But Fed officials insist that these price increases are just “transitory” and are not any sort of a permanent problem.

We are also being told that all of the shortages that have emerged in the past couple of months are “temporary” too.  Some of these shortages are starting to become quite painful, and that is particularly true for the global shortage of computer chips that we are currently experiencing…

In the market for a new car, smartphone or washing machine this year? A global shortage of computer chips could mean you have to wait a while — and pay more.

A growing number of manufacturers around the world are having trouble securing supplies of semiconductors, delaying the production and delivery of goods and threatening to push up the prices paid by consumers.

Just think of all the products that you own that contain computer chips.

It isn’t a short list.

As a society, we have become extremely dependent on computer chips, and CNN is admitting that this shortage “is likely to last through 2021”…

The shortage is going from bad to worse, spreading from cars to consumer electronics. With the bulk of chip production concentrated in a handful of suppliers, analysts warn that the crunch is likely to last through 2021.

This shortage is having a dramatic impact up and down various supply chains, and that is going to be the case for the foreseeable future.

At the Sogefi manufacturing facility in West Virginia, the computer chip shortage is just one of the shortages that is causing massive headaches right now…

Whenever the Sogefi plant here runs out of resin or computer chips or cardboard boxes or wooden pallets or really anything at all, it’s Randy Simpkins’s problem. And whenever one of Sogefi’s customers howls about a late shipment, that’s Simpkins’s problem, too.

These days, Simpkins has plenty of problems.

Our economy is not functioning very smoothly at all, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

But on Friday we were supposed to get some good economic news.

The U.S. economy was supposed to have added about a million jobs in April, but instead we learned that it only added 266,000…

Employers added a disappointing 266,000 jobs in April even as the number of new COVID-19 cases stayed low, more states lifted constraints and vaccinations accelerated.

The gains fell well short of projections in a recovery that’s expected to gather force through the summer, with a million or more jobs added each month.

This is supposed to be “the recovery”, but the unemployment rate actually went up last month.

Ouch.

Let us hope for a better number next month, because there are millions upon millions of Americans that still need to get back to work.

This little “bubble of hope” is about as good as things are going to get for the U.S. economy, and it is just a matter of time before the economy heads into more dark days.

We have literally mortgaged our future to give our economy a temporary short-term boost, and after trillions of dollars in spending the economic numbers are still incredibly anemic.

Yet again, this is another major wake up call, but most people out there seem quite content to continue snoozing.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

This Economic Depression Has Left Very Deep Economic Scars All Over America

The last 12 months have been pure hell for the U.S. economy. According to Oxxford Information Technology, approximately 4 million U.S. businesses permanently closed their doors in 2020.  We have never seen that many businesses wiped out in such a short period of time in the entire history of our country.  Meanwhile, we have seen a tsunami of unemployment that has been absolutely unprecedented.  More than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed during the pandemic, and the number of new claims each week continues to hover at a level that is about three times as high as we witnessed before the pandemic.  Currently, the Economic Policy Institute is telling us that “25 million American workers are either unemployed, underemployed or have pulled out of the workforce entirely”.  This economic depression has already been extremely painful, and many experts believe that a whole lot more economic pain is still on the horizon.

If you are doing well in this economic environment, you should be very thankful for your blessings, because millions of other Americans are suffering greatly.  One of those Americans that is deeply suffering is named Denitra Pearson…

One hundred and forty days have passed since Denitra Pearson lost her job caring for the elderly in their homes. Forty-two days have passed since she, her husband, and children lost all their belongings after a fire engulfed their house on a snowy winter night.

They’re now living in a hotel.

Denitra has six kids to care for, and the only “job” that she has been able to find is low-wage work vaccinating people at a local clinic…

Pearson, a New Haven mother of six, has an associate’s degree and two job certificates but only one of the dozens of applications she’s filled out has led anywhere, landing her another low-wage job at a local clinic vaccinating people against COVID-19. Her husband, who was a chef at a nearby university before the pandemic disrupted the college campus, is still looking for work.

This economic depression has pushed millions of formerly middle class Americans into poverty, and for many of them life will never be the same again.

At this point, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that a whopping 2.4 million Americans have been unemployed for 52 weeks or longer…

Nearly 2.4 million Americans were unemployed 52 weeks or more in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That’s almost double the number in February and is about 1.6 million more people than in March 2020.

Could you imagine being out of work for that long?

Almost one-fourth of all of our unemployed workers have been out of a job for at least 12 months, and one economist that was interviewed by CNBC is calling that fact “pretty breathtaking”…

“I think that number is pretty breathtaking, that nearly a quarter of unemployed workers have been unemployed for over a year,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor from 2014 to 2017.

“It really shows that even as the economy is recovering, you have a lot of the same people who have been unemployed throughout this whole damn thing,” she added.

I feel particularly bad for college students that are graduating in this sort of environment.

Many of them went in with such high hopes and dreams, but now the job opportunities that they were promised are not materializing.

College senior Bao Ha will be graduating this year from Macalaster College in Minnesota, but he hasn’t even been able to land an interview even after applying for more than a hundred jobs…

The job market is starting to roar back, but for anxious college seniors like Bao Ha, it’s a different reality altogether.

“I’ve probably applied to like 130 or 40 jobs or something,” Ha says. “I have not gotten even an email back, or an interview.”

College graduate Erica Schoenberg is in the same boat.

She hasn’t been able to find a full-time job after a year of searching, and so she is still living with her parents…

Erica Schoenberg would know.

She was a member of the class of 2020, which had the misfortune of graduating in the brunt of the pandemic.

A year after Schoenberg watched her virtual graduation ceremony from Trinity University from her living room couch, she’s back at her parents’ home because she can’t find a full-time job.

During this pandemic, the percentage of Americans that are living with their parents reached the highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

That is crazy.

But there is some good news.

The good news is that we are in a temporary pocket of time in which economic conditions have stabilized.  Things are certainly a lot worse than they were before the pandemic, but at least we are not seeing the same sort of rapid deterioration that we did throughout much of 2020.

Of course this temporary pocket of time will not last, and that is the bad news.

If anyone out there believes that Joe Biden is going to save the U.S. economy, they are just being delusional.

The stimulus money that Americans are being showered with right now will help in the short-term, but all of the borrowing and spending that our government is doing will just make our long-term problems even worse.

We should be thankful for the relative stability that we are currently enjoying, but this is not a time to party.

Instead, we should be using this time to prepare for the troubled times that are ahead, because the truth is that our long economic nightmare is just beginning.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

8 Million More Living In Poverty, 9 Million Small Businesses In Danger Of Closing, 10 Million Behind On Rent…

The economic downturn that we are currently experiencing is making the last recession look like a Sunday picnic.  Yes, 2008 and 2009 were bad, but they weren’t anything like this.  Unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve has allowed the rich to get even richer during this crisis, but meanwhile millions upon millions of ordinary Americans are deeply suffering.  Unfortunately, what we have gone through so far is just the beginning.

As a child, I was a big fan of Sesame Street, and one of the characters that really stood out to me was Count von Count.  I loved the fact that he was always counting things, and that is what I am going to do in this article in order to illustrate how bad economic conditions have now become.

Let’s start with the number 7.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, approximately 7 million more Americans would have jobs right now if the COVID pandemic had never happened…

But in fact, what the CBO is projecting is dire: around 7 million people out of work in 2021 whom CBO thought before the pandemic would be working. That’s dire – and a call to immediate action, not calm, not wait-and-see.

Personally, I think that estimate is way too low.

In fact, the Federal Reserve says that 152 million Americans were working before the pandemic started, and only 142 million Americans are working now.

So the CBO estimate appears to be off by about 3 million.

Count von Count would not be happy.

Let’s try another number.  According to Bloomberg, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by 8 million during this crisis…

Support is rising among policy makers to address America’s child-poverty crisis, which is getting worse as the pandemic drags on.

More than 8 million Americans — including many children — fell into poverty during the second half of last year, exacerbating the racial and income inequalities that are holding back the U.S. economy.

In this case, I think that this is a reasonable estimate, but that number will inevitably keep growing in the months ahead.

One of the big reasons why it will continue to rise is because hordes of small businesses will be collapsing, and that brings us to our next number.

According to a study that was recently released by the Fed, 9 million small businesses in the U.S. say that they “won’t survive” in 2021 without more government assistance…

Three in ten small businesses — or 9 million out of the estimated 30 million in the United States — fear they won’t survive in the coming year without additional government assistance, according to a survey recently published by the Federal Reserve.

The Small Business Credit Survey, which was conducted last September and October and released last week, showcased the incredible burden the coronavirus pandemic has placed on America’s small businesses, as 88% of the businesses surveyed reported that sales had not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Can you imagine what our country would look like if almost a third of all small businesses permanently disappeared?

If you watched the Super Bowl, you were bombarded with messaging about the plight of our small businesses.  We have never seen anything like this before, and that is because our small businesses have never had to face a crisis of this magnitude.

With each passing day, more small businesses are folding, and nothing that the federal government is going to do will completely stop this trend.

Our next number is 10.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 10 million renters were behind on their rent payments in January, and many more people anticipated not paying rent in February…

An estimated 10 million renters were behind on their rent and at risk of eviction in the middle of January, according to a Census Bureau survey. And an estimated 16 million renters had little to no confidence they could pay rent in February.

Overall, U.S. renters now owe at least 30 billion dollars in back rent.

This has created extreme financial pain for America’s landlords, and when the rent moratoriums are finally lifted we are going to see the largest tsunami of evictions in all of U.S. history by a very wide margin.

Before I wrap up this article, let me leave you with just one more number.  So far in 2021, the number of passengers at U.S. airports is down by more than 60 percent compared to 2019…

Over the past seven days, not quite 707,000 passengers per day on average passed TSA checkpoints at US airports, a measure of how many passengers in the US are flying somewhere. This was down by 61.6% from the same period in 2019, the last full year of the Good Times. At the end of January, the drop from 2019 was over 65%.

I honestly do not know how the airline industry is going to survive this without government help.

Speaking of not surviving, Democrats have introduced a bill in Congress that would essentially deal a death blow to the gig economy…

The legislation at the core of their agenda is the PRO Act, which Democrats just re-introduced with sponsors including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer. Among many other things, the bill would severely restrict the legal definition of independent contractors in a way that would largely end the gig economy as we know it.

The legislators’ stated intention is to protect workers and bolster their rights under law. Through the reclassification of independent contractors, Democrats hope to force gig economy companies to hire workers as full employees and thus provide them the accompanying salaries and benefits.

If this bill passes, it would absolutely devastate Uber, Lyft and countless other companies that rely on gig workers.

Basically, millions of jobs would go “poof” with one stroke of Joe Biden’s pen.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 50 million Americans are currently employed by the gig economy.  It is great to want those workers to have higher pay and more benefits, but if those companies go out of existence there won’t be any jobs at all.

These are very dark times for the U.S. economy, and the outlook for the future is exceedingly bleak.

However, in the short-term economic conditions should stabilize somewhat thanks to the huge stimulus payments that the government will be sending out.

But that bubble of hope will be very brief, and everyone should be able to see that much more pain is on the horizon.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

Americans Have Never Been More Dissatisfied With How The Country Is Functioning Than They Are Right Now

Are you satisfied with life in America right now?  Before you answer that question, consider more than just politics.  Taking an overall view that encompasses every aspect of our society, are you generally satisfied with how our society is functioning at this moment or not?  Needless to say, we are coming off a very tough year, and 2021 has not started smoothly either.  The COVID pandemic continues to drag on, we are mired in the worst economic downturn in more than 70 years, and there is civil unrest in our streets on an almost nightly basis.  All of these trials and tribulations have taken a great toll on us emotionally, and so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that a new Gallup survey has found that the American people are less satisfied with how our nation is functioning than they ever have been before…

Americans’ satisfaction with seven broad aspects of the way the country functions is collectively at its lowest in two decades of Gallup measurement. This includes satisfaction with the overall quality of life in the U.S., assessments of government, corporate and religious influence, and perceptions of the economic and moral climates.

The average percentage satisfied with these seven dimensions has plunged to 39% at the start of 2021. That compares with 53% a year ago, the highest average in more than a decade amid strong economic confidence and before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the U.S.

For the survey, Gallup specifically asked Americans about the following seven areas…

-The overall quality of life
-The opportunity for a person in this nation to get ahead by working hard
-The influence of organized religion
-The size and power of the federal government
-Our system of government and how well it works
-The size and influence of major corporations
-The moral and ethical climate

Satisfaction for every one of those areas was way down.

In fact, for six of those categories the decline from last year was in double digits.  Shockingly, the only category that declined by just single digits was “the size and power of the federal government”.

Of course whenever economic conditions are harsh, the overall population is not going to be happy, and we have been through a really tough stretch economically.

According to Gary Halbert of Halbert Wealth Management, last year was the worst year for the U.S. economy in 74 years…

Last Thursday the Commerce Department released its first estimate of 4Q Gross Domestic Product showing the economy grew at an annual rate of 4.0% in the final three months of last year. That followed the 3Q record expansion of 33.4% (annual rate) as the economy rebounded strongly following the COVID-19 lockdowns.

2Q GDP plunged by a record-shattering 33.4% (annual rate) following the 1Q slide of 5% in the first three months of the year. For all of 2020 the economy shrank by 3.5%, the worst annual decline in 74 years (WWII).

Sadly, this year has not started very well either.  The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits each week continues to be at nearly four times the pre-pandemic level…

The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits last week edged down but remained elevated as the coronavirus pandemic continues to trigger a high number of layoffs.

Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show that 779,000 Americans filed first-time jobless claims in the week ended Jan. 30, lower than the 830,000 forecast by Refinitiv economists.

And the percentage of those without jobs that are considered to be “long-term unemployed” is approaching a record high…

Almost 40% of jobless workers in January were long-term unemployed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

The share has grown steadily since the spring and is approaching the record set in April 2010, in the aftermath of the Great Recession. At that time, nearly 46% of the unemployed were out of work at least six months.

Our system is supposed to provide a helping hand to those that are out of work, but the help doesn’t always get to those that need it.

Even though I write about our economic problems on a regular basis, even I was shocked by a brand new survey that discovered that “just 30% of unemployed individuals are being reached by the unemployment system”…

Congressional Democrats are trying to fast-track a nearly $2 trillion coronavirus relief proposal that would extend the existing supplemental unemployment benefits, but new research suggests that the jobless aid is not reaching millions of out-of-work Americans.

At most, just 30% of unemployed individuals are being reached by the unemployment system, according to a report published this week by Eliza Forsythe, a labor economist at the University of Illinois. That means roughly three out of every four jobless workers aren’t receiving aid — or about 8 million of the 11 million people counted as unemployed in December.

But for millions of deeply hurting Americans, there is good news in the short-term.  Congress is about to pass another COVID relief bill, and soon more stimulus payments will be going out to the American people.

Of course borrowing and spending another 1.9 trillion dollars that we do not have will make our long-term debt problems even worse and will push us even farther down a highway to hyperinflation.

In the end, most Americans don’t really care that we are literally committing national suicide.  They just know that they are in pain and they want some help as soon as possible.

If economic conditions begin to significantly improve in the weeks ahead, the American people will start to feel better about how the country is doing.

But even if there is some sort of a short-term boost, the long-term outlook is bleaker than ever, and the American people are not going to be able to handle the long-term pain that is coming very well at all.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

We Are Suffering Through The Most Painful Economic Crisis Since The Great Depression Of The 1930s

I warned that an economic collapse was coming, and an economic collapse is exactly what we got.  2020 was a “personal financial disaster” for 55 percent of all Americans, approximately 12 million U.S. renters are “at least $5,850 behind in rent and utilities payments”, the Aspen Institute is projecting that up to 40 million people could be facing eviction when the rent and mortgage moratoriums finally end, and more than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed since the COVID pandemic began.

Nobody can point to a time since the Great Depression of the 1930s when the U.S. economy was in worse shape than it is right now.

Unfortunately, there are no indications that this nightmare is going to end.  Last week, another 900,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits…

Another 900,000 people filed new unemployment claims last week, President Donald Trump’s last in office, a snapshot of the significant labor market challenges facing President Joe Biden.

An additional 423,000 people in 47 states filed new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the program created to help gig and self-employed workers.

Prior to 2020, the all-time record for new unemployment claims in a single week was just 695,000, and that old record was set all the way back in 1982.

We shattered that old record early in 2020, but the bigger story is what has happened since we broke it.

At this point, the number of new claims for unemployment benefits has been above 695,000 for 44 weeks in a row.

That is starting to come close to a full year.

If that does not qualify as a “collapse”, then you are probably using a completely different definition of the word than I am using.

This unemployment crisis has hit low wage workers particularly hard.  At this point, even Fed officials are being forced to admit that the unemployment rate for low wage workers “is above 20%”.

Many of those low wage workers used to be employed in the restaurant industry, but the restaurant industry continues to be mired in the worst stretch that it has ever encountered…

The number of “seated diners,” a daily measure with which OpenTable tracks walk-ins and diners with reservations, in the week through January 20 in the US was down on average by 57% from the same period last year.

The hospitality industry also typically employs large numbers of low wage workers, and we are being told that last year was the “worst year on record” for that industry…

According to STR, Inc, a hotel industry market data firm, 2020 was absolutely the worst year on record for hotels as industrywide profits fell to zero, as the virus pandemic and resulting government-enforced social distancing measures kept travelers at home.

STR’s latest report said the US hotel occupancy rate was 44% for the year, down from 66% in 2019. This was the lowest occupancy rate on record. In an earlier STR report, we noted weeks ago that the industry had one billion unsold room nights for the first time, surpassing the record of 786 million in 2009.

Countless numbers of small business owners have also been absolutely devastated by this economic downturn.

Each month, thousands of small businesses die a permanent death, and the outlook for the months ahead is not good at all.

The Epoch Times recently interviewed one small business owner in Minnesota who admitted that “the fallout by this time next year will be shocking”…

The ramifications of the forced shutdowns on thousands of small businesses in Minnesota is going to be huge, says Julie Schroeder, who owns two craft stores in the Minneapolis metro area.

“The fallout by this time next year will be shocking,” she told The Epoch Times on Dec. 30, 2020.

Meanwhile, north of the border small businesses are being destroyed at a staggering rate as well…

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is warning that more than 220,000 businesses across the country are at risk of permanently closing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The CFIB, a lobby group that represents small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Canada, released a new report on Thursday that surveyed 4,129 members about business prospects through the pandemic. The survey found that 181,000 businesses – or one in six – are seriously contemplating permanently closing. That’s up from a similar survey conducted in July, which found that 158,000 businesses were at risk of closing.

In the end, if we can keep the amount of small businesses in the U.S. and Canada that go under to less than 20 percent that should be considered a major victory.

Because I have a feeling that the final number is going to be well above that threshold.

And the Biden administration does not seem too sympathetic to the needs of small businesses at this point.  For example, one new law that Biden is likely to sign would absolutely cripple small truckers…

Trucking industry experts expect Joe Biden’s presidency to seriously jeopardize many small American trucking companies, and the prospects of truck drivers who work as independent contractors.

Biden is poised to sign a transportation law passed in the Democratic House and stalled in the then-Republican Senate in 2019. The Moving Forward Act had required commercial motor vehicles to maintain more than $2 million in insurance liability, more than doubling the existing $750,000.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our representatives in Washington were forced to take a basic course in economics before they were allowed to serve?

The blind are leading the blind, and the economic nightmare that we are currently experiencing is eventually going to get a whole lot worse.

But hopefully we can at least have a short period of time where things will plateau a bit before the next major trigger event happens.

So many people out there are really hurting right now, and it is not just financial pain that they are dealing with.

The past several months have been excruciatingly painful for tens of millions of Americans, and the truth is that there are countless people out there that are emotionally shattered at this moment.

If you are one of those people, just keep hanging in there.

It will take some time, but you will get through this and you will recover.

And I will continue to be here pumping out articles as I do my very best to try to help everyone make sense of a world that is going completely mad.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

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