Unemployment

Goodbye Middle Class: Half Of All American Workers Made Less Than $34,248.45 Last Year

If you are making less than $3,000 a month, you have plenty of company, because about half of the country is in the exact same boat.  The Social Security Administration just released new wage statistics for 2019, and they are pretty startling.  To me, the most alarming thing in the entire report is the fact that the median yearly wage was just $34,248.45 last year.  In other words, half of all American workers made less than $34,248.45 in 2019, and half of all American workers made more than $34,248.45.  That isn’t a whole lot of money.  In fact, when you divide $34,248.45 by 12 you get just $2,854.05.  Needless to say, it is not easy to survive in America today on just $2,854.05 a month, and this may help to explain why we have been seeing so many people fall out of the middle class in recent years.

And of course all of the figures that I am sharing with you in this article are just for 2019.  This year, we have seen more than 63 million Americans file new claims for unemployment benefits as the U.S. economy has imploded during this pandemic, and so the final wage numbers for 2020 could be quite a bit worse than the numbers for 2019 were.  Please keep that in mind as you go through the rest of this article.

Once upon a time in America, a single income could easily support a middle class household in most cases, but those days are long gone.

The cost of living has been rising far faster than our paychecks have, and as a result many Americans have been working themselves to the bone just to survive financially from month to month.

To give you an idea of just how bad things have gotten, I would like to share with you some key numbers from the report that the Social Security Administration just released…

-32.26 percent of American workers made less than $20,000 last year.

-44.79 percent of American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

-56.46 percent of American workers made less than $40,000 last year.

-65.91 percent of American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

Today, the poverty level for a household of five in the United States is $30,680.

That means that close to half of all workers in this country do not even make enough to get a family of five above the poverty level.

Wow.

There are tens of millions of Americans that are referred to as “the working poor” because they are living in poverty even though they are employed and are working extremely hard.  Many of you that are reading this article know exactly what I am talking about.  Some of you are working way more than 40 hours a week, and yet there never seems to be enough money at the end of the month.

Sadly, the truth is that our system has evolved in a manner that makes it almost impossible for most Americans to ever build up much wealth.

If you are making the median monthly wage of just $2,854.05, there simply is not going to be much left over after all of the bills are paid.  First of all, you are going to need some place to live.  In the middle of the country you may be able to find something habitable for under $1,000 a month, but in most of our major metropolitan areas that simply is not going to be realistic.

Secondly, you are going to need to pay your utility bills.   If you can keep the combined cost of your power, water, phone, television and Internet bills to about $250 a month, you are doing quite well.

Thirdly, you will need a vehicle in order to get around, and these days it is hard to buy or lease a vehicle for less than $300 a month.  In addition, you will also need insurance, and that will set you back even more.

Fourthly, you will need health insurance.  If you are young and single, maybe you can find a plan for just a few hundred dollars a month, but most Americans pay far more.

Fifthly, you will probably want to eat, and that will cost you several hundred dollars a month as well.

At this point almost all of your money is already gone, and there are so many expenses that I haven’t even mentioned yet.

And of course you never even started with $2,854.05 in the first place, because all sorts of taxes were taken out of your paycheck before you even got it.

Are you starting to understand why so many families in America are deeply, deeply struggling today?

We have an economy that works for those at the very top of the food chain, but pretty much everyone else is desperately trying to stay afloat.

And now we have entered an economic downturn during which tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs.  According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were being used the real unemployment rate in the U.S. would be 26.9 percent right now, and that would rival the worst levels that we witnessed during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Others have come up with similar numbers.  For example, Axios is reporting that the “true unemployment rate” in the United States is currently 26.1 percent…

A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can’t find one — is unemployed. If you accept that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a stunning 26.1%, according to an important new dataset shared exclusively with “Axios on HBO.”

No matter how you want to crunch the numbers, everyone should be able to agree that millions upon millions of Americans are really hurting financially and are deeply concerned about the future.

And they have good reason to be concerned about the future, because our economic system is in the process of imploding.

For decades, the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world allowed us to enjoy a level of debt-fueled prosperity that was far greater than we actually deserved.

Now the party is ending, and our society is going to experience an enormous amount of pain as everything changes.

***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 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.

The number of Americans that have filed for unemployment benefits in 2020 exceeds the number that voted for Trump in 2016

I am not trying to make a political statement with this article.  I am simply pointing out that the number of Americans that have filed initial claims for unemployment benefits in 2020 is almost unimaginable.  In 2016, a total of 62,984,828 votes were cast for Donald Trump.  Here in 2020, a total of 63,600,000 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits since the middle of March.  So the number of Americans that have filed for unemployment during this pandemic is now greater than the number of Trump voters in the last election.  Of course if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, we would be saying the exact same thing about her in a couple of weeks.  Back in 2016, she received a grand total of 65,853,514 votes.  The point is not to assign political blame to one side or the other, because neither side knew that COVID-19 was coming.  Rather, I am trying to get my readers to understand that we have witnessed a collapse in employment during this pandemic that is absolutely unprecedented.

And more layoff announcements keep rolling in with each passing day.  For instance, we just learned that ESPN will be laying off hundreds of workers…

ESPN could lay off hundreds of employees in the coming weeks, sources told Front Office Sports.

One source pegged the potential number of job losses between 300 and 700 employees. Another estimated 400 possible lost jobs.

The cuts are expected to hit hardest among ESPN employees who work behind the camera.

For many, working in sports television is a dream job, and it hurts me to think that many of those employees will soon lose jobs that they truly love.

Elsewhere, Amtrak has just announced that they could soon be eliminating 2,400 more jobs…

Amtrak will need to cut 2,400 more jobs and could see “drastic impacts” on its rail service if Congress does not intervene and provide emergency funding for the passenger rail provider, the company announced Thursday.

In a letter to lawmakers, Amtrak President and CEO William Flynn requested nearly $4.9 billion in fiscal year 2021 to help it close massive budget gaps it faces amid the pandemic.

I know that I am probably boring my readers by discussing layoff announcements day after day after day, but I am trying to make a very important point.

We are not in any sort of a “recovery”.  Instead, we have entered a horrifying economic downturn which isn’t going to end any time soon.

If they actually believed that it was going to end soon, all of these big corporations would not be laying off large numbers of workers.

And without jobs, a whole lot of people out there are deeply, deeply suffering.

Right now, millions upon millions of Americans haven’t been paying rent, haven’t been paying their mortgages, haven’t been making their vehicle payments and haven’t been making their credit card payments.

And I was absolutely stunned to learn that payments are being made on only 11 percent of federal student loans right now…

Less than 11% of people with federal student loans are repaying them during the pandemic, according to data analyzed by higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. That means about 4.6 million out of 42 million borrowers are continuing to pay down their debt.

Eventually the federal government will be requiring everyone to start making their payments again, but for now this break is helping a lot of people get through this very challenging time.

But when will this challenging time finally be over?

After the election?

In 2021?

So many Americans are looking forward to having economic conditions return to “normal”, but the truth is that our entire system is in the process of melting down and things are never going to be as good as they once were.

For decades, we enjoyed an unprecedented bubble of debt-fueled prosperity that allowed us to have a massively inflated standard of living, but now that bubble is bursting.

But for the moment, there is still one bubble that has stubbornly refused to end.  Thanks to the Federal Reserve, stock prices continue to go up even in the midst of this economic depression, and this has made the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us wider than ever before…

The poorest 50 percent of Americans, or roughly 165 million people, collectively owned about $2.08 trillion in wealth in the second quarter of 2020, according to Federal Reserve data released last week.

That’s less than the net worth of the nation’s 59 richest billionaires, who have a combined fortune of about $2.09 trillion, Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index shows — a number that’s grown this year despite the COVID-19 crisis kneecapping the global economy.

Just think about that.

59 Americans have as much wealth as the 165,000,000 poorest Americans combined.

And overall, billionaires around the world are now worth more than 10 trillion dollars…

Billionaire wealth reached record high levels amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a report by UBS and PwC found, as a rally in stock prices and gains in technology and healthcare helped the wealth of the world’s richest break the $10 trillion mark.

The report, covering over 2,000 billionaires representing some 98% of the cohort’s total wealth, found billionaire wealth grew by more than a quarter during the early months of the pandemic to reach $10.2 trillion in July, breaking the previous record of $8.9 trillion at the end of 2019.

Meanwhile, Americans are lining up for miles to get handouts at food banks all over the nation, and it is being projected that more than 50 million Americans will soon not have enough food to eat on a regular basis.

But the mainstream media is going to continue to try to put a happy face on things.  In fact, they are telling us that “stocks will probably rise no matter who wins the presidential election”, and that has to be music to the ears of most wealthy investors.

Of course it is just a matter of time before a day of reckoning comes for those wealthy investors too.

I believe that the months ahead are going to represent a major turning point for our country.  Millions of Americans will have their hopes brutally crushed by the outcome of this upcoming election, and millions of others will be plunged into despair as our nation continues to be rocked by one major crisis after another.

If your life is defined by the system that the elite have created, the times that are approaching are going to be exceedingly difficult for you because that system is failing.

But if you choose to live for the things that really matter, you won’t be overwhelmed no matter how bad things get.

And as bad as things are right now, the truth is that all of this is nothing compared to what is eventually coming.

***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 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.

20 things that you must believe in order to convince yourself that everything is going to turn out okay somehow

Despite everything that we have already been through in 2020, the dominant narrative in our society right now is that everything is going to be just fine once we get past our temporary problems.  So many people that I hear from can’t understand why I am so “negative” about the future, because they are completely convinced that really great days are just around the corner.  As odd as this may sound, we are seeing this sort of wild optimism among both Democrats and Republicans, Christians and atheists, capitalists and communists.  Of course about half the country will have their optimistic hopes for the future brutally crushed by the results of the upcoming election, but we aren’t there yet.  For now, both sides are absolutely convinced that they are going to win, and both sides are envisioning a wonderful new era for our nation in which their values reign triumphant.

If only things were that easy.

The truth is that many of our largest problems have been steadily growing for decades, and they aren’t going to magically disappear just because a particular candidate wins an election.  Our debt levels are absolutely exploding, our economy has plunged into a depression, there is widespread civil unrest in our streets, our nation is more divided than it has ever been in my entire lifetime, and our society is literally coming apart at the seams as just about every form of evil that you can possibly imagine is growing rapidly all around us.

But there are a whole lot of people out there that want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that everything is going to be just fine.

If you would like to be just like them, the following are 20 things that you must believe in order to convince yourself that everything is going to turn out okay somehow…

#1 “Being 27 trillion dollars in debt is not a problem.  We can go into as much debt as we want, and future generations of Americans won’t mind at all that we are dumping all of our bills on them.”

#2 “The fact that the Federal Reserve creates trillions of dollars out of thin air whenever a major crisis erupts doesn’t really matter.  We can debase the reserve currency of the world as much as we want and the rest of the globe will continue to use it and the inflation rate in this country will never get out of control.”

#3 “Antifa is just an idea, and all of the rioting, looting and violence will somehow magically come to an end after the upcoming election.”

#4 “When I see people smashing windows, setting buildings on fire and shooting at police officers, I just remember to remind myself that those are really just peaceful protesters.”

#5 “It is perfectly okay that a former intern for Joe Biden will moderate the next presidential debate.  He has promised that he will be perfectly neutral, and I believe him.”

#6 “Kamala Harris will never become president if Joe Biden wins the election, because Joe Biden is so strong and vigorous that he could easily make it through two terms.”

#7 “The Democrats would never pack the Supreme Court, because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are way too decent to ever allow that to happen.”

#8 “Once the election is over, the big social media companies will give us our freedom of speech back because that is the right thing to do.”

#9 “It makes perfect sense that the stock market has soared to record highs while the real economy has plunged into a horrifying depression.  This isn’t a bubble, and stock prices will just keep going up indefinitely.”

#10 “It is perfectly okay that 40 percent of U.S. children are being born outside of marriage.  America can certainly prosper without strong marriages and strong families because so many other great civilizations have shown that it can be done.”

#11 “Even though study after study has shown that antibodies fade very rapidly and that any immunity is very short-lived, a vaccine will save us from this pandemic.”

#12 “Once this virus has been eradicated, they won’t make us wear masks anymore, and they certainly wouldn’t try to force people to take vaccines if they don’t want them.”

#13 “Now that everyone has seen how much chaos this pandemic has caused, evil people would never purposely release more deadly viruses because they wouldn’t want to kick us while we are down.”

#14 “There is no need to worry that our relationships with Russia and China have gone down the tubes, because our military is so strong that nobody would ever dare getting into a military conflict with us.”

#15 “Even though the head of the UN World Food Program is warning that there will be famines of ‘biblical proportions’, I am sure that any food shortages are just temporary and everyone in the world will have plenty of food to eat in 2021 and beyond.”

#16 “More than 60 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits this year, but most of those jobs will quickly come back, and we are on the verge of the greatest era of economic prosperity in U.S. history.”

#17 “The rapid rise in crime rates in cities all over the nation is just temporary.  I am sure that things will go back to normal in 2021.”

#18 “We can ignore the hundreds of earthquakes that are shaking the west coast, because ‘the Big One’ probably won’t happen for thousands of years.”

#19 “The fact that tens of millions of Americans will be mailing in their ballots won’t cause any issues at all.  All of the ballots will be counted quickly, efficiently and accurately, and the American people will remain perfectly calm while we wait for days or even weeks to find out the winner of the presidential election.”

#20 “Even though more than 60 million children have already been aborted, and even though every form of evil that you can possibly imagine is exploding all around us, there will never be any serious consequences for our actions and the greatest days for America are still ahead of us even though we completely refuse to change our ways.”

***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 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.

15 Signs That America’s Economic Depression Is Accelerating As We Head Toward The Holiday Season

Hardly anyone expected that things would get this bad in 2020.  Once the pandemic hit and states all over the country started instituting lockdowns, economic activity collapsed dramatically.  U.S. GDP was down 31.4 percent during the second quarter of 2020, and that was a drop without parallel in all of U.S. history.  In fact, that decline was more than three times as large as the previous record.  But eventually states started to “reopen” their economies, and U.S. GDP for the third quarter is expected to show a significant rebound when the numbers are finally released.  Of course we still aren’t even close to where we used to be, but at least things weren’t as bad as they were in the second quarter.  But now as the fourth quarter begins, it appears that economic conditions are heading back in the wrong direction again.  The following are 15 signs that America’s economic depression is accelerating as we head toward the holiday season…

#1 All 546 Regal Cinema theaters in the United States are being shut down, and right now there is no timetable for reopening them.

#2 It is being reported that AMC Entertainment (the largest movie theater chain in the U.S.) will “run out of liquidity” in 6 months.

#3 Over the weekend, I was told by someone that works in the industry that he expects most movie theaters in the country to eventually close down permanently because of this pandemic.

#4 The average rent on a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco is 20.3 percent lower than it was one year ago.

#5 During the 3rd quarter, the number of vehicles delivered by General Motors was down about 10 percent from a year ago.

#6 It is being reported that Anheuser-Busch will be laying off 400 employees in Loveland, Denver, Littleton and Colorado Springs.

#7 Allstate has just announced that they will be laying off 3,800 workers.

#8 JCPenney says that it will be cutting approximately 15,000 jobs as we approach the holiday shopping season.

#9 At least one-fourth of the 28,000 layoffs that Disney will be conducting will happen in Florida.

#10 Collectively, American Airlines and United Airlines let 32,000 employees go last week.

#11 On Thursday, we learned that another 787,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits during the previous week.

#12 Overall, more than 60 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits so far in 2020.  That number is far higher than anything we have ever seen before in all of U.S. history.

#13 Retail store closings in the United States continue to surge along at a pace that is absolutely unprecedented.

#14 Bankruptcy filings in New York City have risen 40 percent so far in 2020.

#15 This number is hard to believe, but it is being reported that almost 90 percent of New York City bar and restaurant owners couldn’t pay their full rent for the month of August.

None of this was supposed to happen.

By now, we were supposed to be well into a “V-shaped recovery” that would soon have Americans forgetting all about the dark days in the middle of 2020.

But instead, millions upon millions of Americans have lost their jobs and are facing a deeply uncertain future.  One of those Americans is an unemployed cook named Juan Jose Martinez Camacho…

Juan Jose Martinez Camacho, 59, has been a cook for 30 years, since he was asked to fill in one day when he was working as a dishwasher in a restaurant.

He has worked as a cook at the Crowne Plaza in Redondo Beach, California, for 22 years. When he was laid off on March 23, he was thinking it would be only two or three months before things got back to normal. But late last month he was notified he had permanently lost the job, which paid $22 an hour. He has been looking for other cooking jobs without any luck.

Can you imagine doing the same thing for 30 years and suddenly being out of a job?

Like most Americans, he assumed that the pandemic would soon pass and he would be going back to his old routine.

But that hasn’t happened, and so he is among the millions of restaurant workers that are not bringing in any income right now.

With so many Americans out of work, food banks around the country have been dealing with a tsunami of demand.  In previous articles, I have written about the absolutely massive lines that we have been seeing in certain portions of the nation.  In some cases, people have started lining up at 2 AM in the morning and the lines have gotten up to 2 miles long.

And every week we see more gigantic lines at food banks all over America.  The following is how one local news source described the massive lines that have been consistently forming in the state of Texas…

Thousands of cars form tightly packed lines across the state every week now to receive food. From Chihuahuan Desert border towns and cities to the staked plains of the panhandle, across the piney wood of deep East Texas, down to the Rio Grande and back cars stack, growing into steel and fiberglass caterpillars, hungry.

These events have distributed tens of millions of pounds of food over the past six months.

If you still have your job and you haven’t been forced to visit a food bank during this crisis, you should be thankful for your blessings.

Just like in the 1930s, we are witnessing colossal lines for food all over the nation, and this is just the beginning.

If you have been waiting for a “recovery”, you can stop waiting, because what we witnessed during the third quarter was about all the “recovery” that we are going to get.

Now we are less than a month away from a presidential election that promises to be incredibly chaotic, and the extremely deep divisions that already exist in our nation are likely to get even worse.  Many believe that this election will produce even more civil unrest, and that will likely depress economic activity even further.

I truly wish that economic conditions would “return to normal” and that all of us could get back to our old patterns.

But there isn’t going to be any “return to normal” any time soon.

Instead, very dark days are ahead, and those very dark days will shake this nation to the core.

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

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 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.

This Explosion Of Bankruptcies And Layoffs In The United States Is Unlike Anything We Have Ever Seen Before

The U.S. economy was supposed to be turning a corner by now, but instead it looks like we are headed for an exceedingly painful winter.  All over the country, big companies are laying off thousands of workers, and in some cases the numbers are even larger than that.  As you will see in this article, Disney just announced that they will be laying off tens of thousands of workers, and the airline industry is warning that 100,000 workers could soon permanently lose their jobs if the federal government doesn’t bail them out.  Meanwhile, we have been seeing businesses fail at a pace that is absolutely stunning.  According to the Wall Street Journal, this year we are on pace to set new records for retail stores closings, retail bankruptcies, and retail liquidations…

Retail store closings in the U.S. reached a record in the first half of 2020 and the year is on pace for record bankruptcies and liquidations as the Covid-19 pandemic accelerates industry changes, particularly the shift to online shopping, according to a report on the downturn’s severity.

Apparel retailers have been hit particularly hard during this pandemic, and it has been extremely sad to see some of the most iconic brands in the entire industry reach the end of the line…

Among the notable companies that went belly-up over the summer are Lord & Taylor and its subsidiary, Le Tote; Tailored Brands, which is the parent company of Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank; and Ann Taylor’s corporate parent Ascena Retail Group.

But it isn’t just the retail industry that is being utterly devastated.

According to Zero Hedge, there has been a “40% eruption in bankruptcy filings” in New York City so far in 2020, and one bankruptcy lawyer is warning that “there will be an avalanche of bankruptcies” as we approach the end of the year…

While Wall Street panic buys stocks again, on hopes Washington can pass the next round of much-needed economic stimulus, the broader commercial real estate market continues to implode and nowhere more so than the epicenter in New York City, where nearly 6,000 business closures, has resulted in a 40% eruption in bankruptcy filings across business districts of all five boroughs this year, reported Bloomberg.

Al Togut, a bankruptcy lawyer who has handled insolvencies for small firms to mega-corporations, said, “by late fall, there will be an avalanche of bankruptcies … When the cold weather comes, that’s when we’ll start to see a surge in bankruptcies in New York City.”

So does that sound like things will be getting better or does that sound like things will be getting worse?

I know that the answer is obvious.  I am just trying to make things crystal clear for those that have been deluded into thinking that we are headed for some sort of a “recovery”.

As more businesses collapse, more workers will lose their jobs.  So even though we have already seen more than 60 million American workers file new claims for unemployment benefits in 2020, more waves of unemployment are still on the way.

For example, we just learned that KPMG will be eliminating 1,400 jobs.  Those are good paying jobs and they will not be easy to replace.

Not to be outdone, Disney has announced that they will be laying off 20 times as many workers…

Disney is set to lay off around 28,000 employees in the United States as prolonged closures and limited attendance have decimated its theme park business.

The announcement was made in a letter to employees Tuesday from Josh D’Amaro, Disney’s head of parks, who detailed several ‘difficult decisions’ the company has been forced to make amid the ongoing pandemic.

Personally, I think that it is very cruel for Disney to do this.

They have made countless billions of dollars off of all of us over the past several decades, and they are in absolutely no danger of going bankrupt.

So can’t they come up with a little bit of cash to pay those workers during these tough months?

On the other hand, the airline industry is actually on the verge of a historic implosion, and we are being told that 100,000 workers could soon lose their jobs if they don’t get a massive bailout from the federal government.  The following comes from Wolf Richter…

October 1 is the day US airlines that accepted their portion of the $25-billion bailout under the CARES Act can start involuntary layoffs of their employees. They’ve been shedding large numbers of employees since March but through voluntary buyouts, early retirements, and other programs that induced employees to temporarily or permanently leave. Now the airlines are engaged in a desperate lobbying effort to get legislation signed into law that would provide the next $25-billion bailout package. Threats have been flying, so to speak, to motivate Congress to get this done.

American Airlines CEO Doug Parker told CBS News on Sunday that if there isn’t a new bailout program, “there are going to be 100,000 aviation professionals who are out of work, who wouldn’t be otherwise.” This would include the 18,000 employees American Airlines has threatened to lay off.

With everything that is going on, I don’t have any idea how so many Americans can still feel so confident about the economy right now.

It just doesn’t make any sense.

Perhaps this is another sign of how self-involved we have all become.  If you haven’t lost your job and nobody you know personally has lost a job, perhaps things still seem okay in your little world.

But for many Americans, this economic downturn has quickly become a horror show.  In Philadelphia, a housekeeper named Kat Payne was “furloughed” from her hotel job back in March, and now trying to figure out how to survive has become part of her daily routine…

Most mornings, Kat Payne calls a family meeting and talks with her children about how — or if — they are going to be able to pay their bills each month. It’s a routine she began after she was furloughed from her job as a housekeeper at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown in March.

Payne, along with her 27-year-old daughter Kipati and 28-year-old son Atrayu, gather in their North Philadelphia living room, with the household bills in hand. She reviews the mortgage payments and her retirement and savings accounts with her children.

At this point, Payne has not been able to pay her mortgage for four months in a row, and she just received a letter with some more devastating news…

Payne, 51, a single parent, recently received a letter from Marriott, which she reads out loud to her children: “We’re extending your layoff until December 31, 2020.”

Could you imagine being in her shoes?

What would you do?

Unfortunately, there are tens of millions of other Americans just like her that are deeply hurting right now, and economic conditions are only going to get worse in 2021 and beyond.

With each passing month, more businesses are going to crumble, more workers are going to lose their jobs, and more financial stress is going to be put on the system.

All of the dominoes are starting to fall, and every day there are more headlines that tell us that our society is coming apart at the seams.

I have been warning my readers for a very long time that this was coming, and now that it is here there will be no escape.

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

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.  By purchasing the book 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.  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)  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.

2020 Has Been A “Nightmare Year” For America, And The Economic Fallout Is Just Getting Started

Most of us have never experienced a year that has been as tough as 2020 has been for our nation.  It has just been one major crisis after another, and the month of September has brought us even more trouble.  The worst wildfire season in the history of the state of California has been making headlines day after day, and now the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg threatens to escalate the political turmoil in this nation to an entirely new level.  Many had such high hopes for 2020, but at this point this year has been such a disaster that USA Today is calling it “an American nightmare”, and it is difficult to argue with their reasoning…

First the pandemic, which divided us, economically devastated us, and has killed nearly 200,000 of us. Then the racial unrest, erupting at the deaths of more Black Americans at the hands of police: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Daniel Prude.

Now the extreme weather. For only the second time in history, the National Hurricane Center has moved into the Greek alphabet for storm names. This season’s wildfires are bigger, deadlier and more frequent than in years past. In the West, people can’t breathe.

And now a member of the U.S. Supreme Court has died with about a month and a half to go until we get to election day.

The shocking death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has stunned the entire country, and I will share my analysis on where things could go from here on The Most Important News later tonight.

In this article, I want to focus on the economic impact that all of this chaos is having.

Since the pandemic first started, more than 60 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits, and that is a threshold that has never been crossed before in all of our history.

And we have also seen businesses shut down at a pace that is hard to fully grasp.  If you can believe it, more than 160,000 businesses listed on Yelp say “that they have closed”…

Yelp on Wednesday released its latest Economic Impact Report, revealing business closures across the U.S. are increasing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic’s economic toll.

As of Aug, 31, 163,735 businesses have indicated on Yelp that they have closed. That’s down from the 180,000 that closed at the very beginning of the pandemic. However, it actually shows a 23% increase in the number of closures since mid-July.

I was most alarmed by that last sentence.

Things were supposed to be getting a lot better by now, but instead we have seen “a 23% increase in the number of closures since mid-July”.

That is not good.

And the percentage of businesses on Yelp that are indicating that their closures are “permanent” just keeps rising…

In addition to monitoring closed businesses, Yelp also takes into account the businesses whose closures have become permanent. That number has steadily increased throughout the past six months, now reaching 97,966, representing 60% of closed businesses that won’t be reopening.

So what this means is that none of us should be expecting a return to what we considered to be “normal” prior to 2020.

In fact, it is likely that we will see large numbers of businesses continue to fail in the months ahead.  According to Fox Business, a whopping 40 percent of all U.S. restaurants “could go under within the next six months”…

At least 40% of restaurant operators struggling to stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic believe their businesses could go under within the next six months if there is no additional stimulus package from the federal government, according to a new survey by the National Restaurant Association.

With one in every six restaurants closed permanently or for the “long term,” the industry is on track to lose $240 billion in sales by the end of the year, according to the National Restaurant Association’s findings on the impact COVID-19 has on the restaurant business.

So what do you think?

Should we bail out the restaurant industry?

By the way, the airline industry really wants a bailout too.

And just about every other industry is looking for government help as well.

The reason why almost everyone has their hands out is because we have plunged into a crippling economic depression, and everyone is starting to realize that there is no end in sight to this downturn.

Of course most average citizens also want another round of “stimulus checks” from the federal government, and we are being told that there is a really good chance that “the economy backslides” if that does not happen…

Lawmakers remain deadlocked over a measure to provide another round of $1,200 checks to most households and more aid to struggling small businesses and unemployed Americans. Most saw the money they received from Congress’s $2.2 trillion CARES Act run dry over the summer.

“If they don’t” approve another stimulus, “they’re taking a huge risk, says Mark Zandi chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The odds are better than even the economy backslides.”

We have already stolen several trillion dollars from future generations of Americans so far this year to fund “stimulus packages”, and so a lot of people figure that it probably wouldn’t make that much of a difference if we stole several trillion more to fund another one.

And the Federal Reserve has been flooding the financial system with so much new money that it makes everything that they have ever done in the past look completely insignificant.

In the process, our authorities are systematically destroying the reserve currency that the entire globe depends upon, but at this point very few people seem to care.

So we continue to steamroll toward economic oblivion, and nobody is even thinking about hitting the brakes.

In the USA Today article that I quoted at the start of this piece, the author stated that it is “impossible to know if the worst is behind us or still lies ahead”…

Many of us are vacillating between horror and disbelief at what can only be described as an American nightmare. Devastation doesn’t cover it. It’s impossible to know if the worst is behind us or still lies ahead.

Of course that is not true at all.  In fact, it is exceeding clear that what is ahead of us is going to be much, much worse than what we have already experienced.

But most Americans don’t want to hear that.

Most of us just want to cling to the belief that someday we will wake up and everything will have returned to normal.

That may happen in fairy tales, but this is real life, and real life simply does not work that way.

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

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.  By purchasing the book 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.  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)  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.

If You Feel Like Something Really, Really Bad Is About To Happen, You Are Definitely Not Alone

If this is “the recovery”, what are things going to look like once economic conditions start to deteriorate again?  As you will see below, more than half of all households in some of our largest cities “are facing serious financial problems”, and Americans continue to file for unemployment benefits at a rate that the United States had never seen before prior to 2020.  When 695,000 workers filed for unemployment benefits during a single week in 1982, it established a record which stood for nearly 38 years.  But now we have been way above that old record for 25 weeks in a row.  On Thursday, we learned that another 884,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week…

Weekly jobless claims were worse than expected last week amid a plodding climb for the U.S. labor market from the damage inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Labor Department on Thursday reported 884,000 first-time filings for unemployment insurance, compared with 850,000 expected by economists surveyed by Dow Jones. The total was unchanged from the previous week.

Of course it is always important to look at the non-adjusted numbers, and according to those numbers we actually saw an increase over the previous week…

The Labor Department changed its methodology in how it seasonally adjusts the numbers, so the past two weeks’ totals are not directly comparable to the reports from earlier in the pandemic. Claims not adjusted for seasonal factors totaled 857,148, an increase of 20,140 from the previous week.

This is the second week in a row that the non-seasonally adjusted initial claims have risen.

That definitely wasn’t supposed to happen.

We are supposedly in a “recovery” right now, and things are supposed to be getting better.

But instead they appear to be getting worse.  According to Wolf Richter, continuing claims under all state and federal programs were way up last week…

Total continued claims for unemployment insurance (UI) under all state and federal programs rose by 380,000, to 29.6 million people (not seasonally adjusted), the highest since August 1, according to the Department of Labor this morning. This was the second weekly increase in a row, after the 2.2-million jump last week.

At any other time in American history, the numbers that were just reported would be considered “catastrophic”, but we have been getting these sorts of catastrophic numbers for so long that we have become desensitized to them.

But at least the unemployment numbers are not as bad as they were earlier this year, and other economic figures seem to have hit a bit of a plateau as well.

So for the moment there is relative calm, but it won’t last for very long.

If you feel like something really, really bad is about to happen, you are definitely not alone.  There are countless others that are also waiting for “the other shoe to drop”, and I believe that it could literally happen at any time.

But for now we wait.

I would encourage you to enjoy these remaining days of summer while you still can.  This weekend, put some burgers on the grill and enjoy some time with your family.  Unfortunately, there are many Americans that are under such financial stress that it is hard to enjoy much of anything right now.  In fact, one recent survey found that 50 percent or more of the households in some of our largest cities are currently facing “serious financial problems”…

There’s no question the coronavirus pandemic has forced many Americans into financial hardship, but a new NPR/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation survey provided a clearer picture of the extent of the struggles in the United States’ four largest cities.

At least half of all households in those cities — 53 percent in New York City, 56 percent in Los Angeles, 50 percent in Chicago, and 63 percent in Houston — reported facing serious financial problems, including depleted savings, problems paying credit card bills, and affording medical bills.

How can that be possible if we are in the midst of a tremendous “recovery”?

Of course the truth is that we aren’t in any sort of a recovery, but at least things are a whole lot better than they will be after the upcoming election.

I had such an ominous feeling coming into 2020, and I shared this repeatedly with my readers, and now I have such an ominous feeling about the rest of 2020 and beyond.

In particular, I am extremely concerned about what will happen in November.  No matter who is ultimately declared the winner, the other side is going to be convinced that the election was stolen from them and that is likely to throw our nation into a state of chaos.

And we are already being told that we probably will not know the winner until long after election day.  That period of uncertainty is almost certainly going to spark more civil unrest, and I believe that faith in the integrity of our elections will be greatly shaken.

Before I end this article, there is one more thing that I wanted to mention that I found to be extremely interesting.  This year the Federal Reserve has been buying up mortgage bonds worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and according to Mish Shedlock the Fed now owns nearly a third of that entire market…

  • The Fed has snapped up $1 trillion of mortgage bonds since March. It bought around $300 billion of the bonds in each of March and April, and since then has been buying about $100 billion a month.
  • The Fed now owns almost a third of bonds backed by home loans in the U.S.
  • Buying the securities has pushed mortgage rates lower, with the average 30-year rate falling to 2.91% as of last week from 3.3% in early February.
  • Morgan Stanley analysts pointed out in late March that the buying was running at eight times the pace seen in prior episodes of Fed purchasing under programs known as quantitative easing.

No matter who wins the election, the direction of the Fed is not going to change.  They are going to continue to engage in exceedingly reckless manipulation of the markets, and that is going to have very serious long-term implications.

All around us, we can see our society being thrown into convulsions as all of our systems begin to fail.

I know that so many of you out there are feeling the exact same way that I am.

A sense of anticipation hangs in the air, and millions of people are waiting for the next big crisis to erupt.

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

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.  By purchasing the book 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.  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)  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.

Signs Of Trouble As We Make The Turn Toward The Fall?

Over the past several months we have been witnessing one of the most gloriously irrational stock market rallies in U.S. history.  Even CNN is admitting that this is “the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes”, but stock prices have just kept going higher and higher until this week.  Several months ago the Federal Reserve decided to do whatever it took to rescue the financial markets, and their exceedingly reckless behavior fueled a speculative boom that is unlike anything that we have ever seen before.  But now it appears that the boom may be ending.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 807 points on Thursday, and it appears that Friday could be another very challenging day for Wall Street.  It is well documented that many of the greatest stock market crashes in history have happened in the fall, and many investors may be trying to bail out before this latest bubble bursts in spectacular fashion.

Tech stocks have led the way up during this latest rally, and now they could potentially start leading the market back in the other direction.  On Thursday, the biggest names in the tech world got hit particularly hard…

Apple shares fell 8% for their biggest one-day decline since March 16. Amazon and Netflix were both down more than 4% and Facebook slid 3.8%. Microsoft slipped 6.2%. Alphabet pulled back by 5.1%.

And Tesla has been absolutely monkey-hammered over the past several days.  If you can believe it, the stock is now 18 percent lower than it was on Monday…

Tesla shares slid 9% on Thursday, building on the stock’s recent losses after the company’s largest outside shareholder reduced its position, and after the automaker said it would raise up to $5 billion in a new share offering.

With Thursday’s decline, the stock is more than 18% below Monday’s close, a day when the name surged following its stock split.

But I wouldn’t be crying too much for those holding Tesla stock just yet.  The stock is still way, way up so far in 2020, and it is still massively overvalued.

In fact, if Tesla’s stock price fell 90 percent I would still think that it was overvalued.

Needless to say, the entire market is tremendously overvalued at this point.  It is absolutely absurd that the Dow is sitting above 28,000 at the moment.  Investors decided to divorce economic reality long ago, and even with the losses that we have seen this week they are still sitting really pretty.

But could that soon change?

According to one expert that was just interviewed by CNBC, the market could be heading into a “Minsky moment”…

Asset prices could be on the cusp of a sharp collapse known as a “Minsky moment,” and may retest lows last seen in March, according to Ron William, market strategist and founder of RW Advisory.

So exactly what is a “Minsky moment”?

The following is how CNBC defines it…

A “Minsky moment,” named after economist Hyman Minsky, refers to a sudden market collapse following an unsustainable bull run, which in this case could be fueled by the “easy credit” environment created as a result of unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus measures.

I think that may be a perfect description of what we are facing.  Since the second half of March, the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are all up more than 50 percent even though the U.S. economy as a whole has been falling apart all around us.

If we were ever due for a “Minsky moment”, it is now.

And it is interesting to note that the stock market also peaked in early September in 1929.  The following quote from Sven Henrich was just posted by Zero Hedge…

“September 3rd marked the top in 1929 following a furious rally fueled by wild optimism, excessive retail speculative behavior and markets disconnecting far above the fundamentals of the economy.”

It has been said that history doesn’t always repeat, but it often rhymes.

Meanwhile, we just learned that a huge number of Americans filed for unemployment benefits once again last week.

As I discussed a week ago, the Labor Department decided to change the way that it calculates seasonal adjustments for initial unemployment claims, and this week was going to be the first week when that change was going to show up.  So it wasn’t a surprise that the “official number” was lower than last week, but when you look at the unadjusted numbers the story is completely different.

In fact, those figures tell us that the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits was about 7,000 higher than the week before.

That is very troubling, because if we were going to have any sort of an “economic recovery” before the next wave of economic pain, it should be happening now.

And according to Wolf Richter, the number of continuing unemployment claims under all state and federal programs was way up over the previous week…

Powered by a nasty jump in continued unemployment claims under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program for contract workers, established under the CARES Act, total continued claims under all state and federal programs jumped by 2.2 million, “not seasonally adjusted,” to 29.2 million people on unemployment rolls, the highest since August 1, according to the Department of Labor this morning.

In our entire history, we have never seen a spike in unemployment claims like we have in 2020.

But up until now, investors on Wall Street have been able to ignore what has been going on in the rest of the country.

In some ways it is easy to be in awe of their single-minded focus on speculative greed, and the mainstream media has been proudly touting how much richer some of the wealthiest investors have been getting.

Of course the truth is that you only make money in the stock market if you get out in time.  Nothing goes up forever, and this ridiculously absurd bubble will end the same way that so many others have.

Meanwhile, the real economy will continue to deteriorate as we plunge even deeper into the “perfect storm” that we are now dealing with.

In addition to everything else, a hotly contested presidential election is looming, and the fact that we are not likely to have a winner until some time well after November 3rd is just going to make matters even worse.

We truly live in historic times, and I have a feeling that they are about to get a whole lot more “interesting”.

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

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.  By purchasing the book 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.  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)  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.

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