Unemployment Benefits

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.

Thoughts On The “New Normal” And The Things That We Are Losing As A Society…

The last two years have greatly shaken America, and our country will never be the same as a result.  If you would have told someone two years ago that in 2021 millions of people would run around wearing masks all day and that the federal government would be relentlessly pushing a large scale mass injection campaign, that person probably would have thought that you were nuts.  But now this is the “new normal”.  Our freedoms and liberties have been permanently eroded, and now that they have gotten away with pushing the envelope so dramatically, government entities on all levels will be ready to flex their muscles again once the next major crisis comes along.

You could argue that we should just vote out the politicians that are running things on the state and federal levels, but exactly how are we supposed to do that?

After what we witnessed last November, tens of millions of Americans won’t believe that our system of choosing leaders is legitimate ever again.

Of course those that are currently running things could attempt to restore faith in the system by getting rid of all the voting machines and by instituting real reforms that would make the process as transparent as possible, but we all know that they will never do that.

The last couple of years have been extremely painful for our economy as well.  More than 70 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last year, homeless encampments started popping up like mushrooms all over the country, and countless numbers of small businesses shut down permanently.  In fact, most Americans say that they have lost a favorite local business as a result of the pandemic…

Few people have escaped the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic and that’s especially true for local ‘mom and pop’ shops. A new study finds half of Americans have witnessed their favorite local businesses close down because of COVID-19.

A survey of 2,000 people reveals 68 percent personally know a local business owner impacted by the pandemic. According to respondents, the most commonly impacted businesses include cafes (62%), retail shops (58%), gaming shops (55%), and book stores (54%).

On Thursday, we learned that another 444,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week.

In 2019, such a number would have been considered catastrophic.

But in the “new normal”, that number is actually considered to be “good news”.

Our politicians have tried to make everyone feel better by sending out waves of huge government checks, but that has just created rampant inflation and widespread shortages.

We are also losing the peace on our streets.  Murder rates were way up in major cities all over America in 2020, and in most of those cities they are even higher this year.

And it isn’t just men that are shooting men.  Today, I came across an article about an “eight-woman brawl” that resulted in a pregnant mother being gunned down…

A pregnant mother was shot and killed while she sat in her car close to an eight-woman brawl that erupted in gunfire.

The deadly confrontation took place just before 6pm Tuesday in the 1200 block of Valencia Avenue in Hemet, which is located 75 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Family members identified the 27-year-old who had been shot in the head and died after being flown to a county trauma center as Tamika Haynes.

What in the world is happening to us?

You would have never read about such a thing happening on the streets of America in 1950.

These days, we seem to be losing control of just about everything, and that even includes the technology that we have become so dependent upon.  Hackers are causing nightmares for large entities all over the U.S., and in many cases absolutely enormous ransoms are being paid out…

CNA Financial Corp., among the largest insurance companies in the U.S., paid $40 million in late March to regain control of its network after a ransomware attack, according to people with knowledge of the attack.

The Chicago-based company paid the hackers about two weeks after a trove of company data was stolen, and CNA officials were locked out of their network, according to two people familiar with the attack who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Criminals seem to have the upper hand on the Internet, in our streets and in the halls of power in Washington and on Wall Street.

In previous times, we could rely on law enforcement to restore order, but now law enforcement authorities are being relentlessly demonized in our society.

In fact, it has gotten so bad that large numbers of law enforcement officers are permanently walking away from their careers.  For example, it is being reported that nearly 20 percent of all police officers in Seattle have quit over the past year.

Police departments all over the nation are having an exceedingly difficult time recruiting replacements for those that are leaving, and that is going to continue to be the case as long as we are treating police officers like human garbage.

Speaking of human garbage, just check out the bill that was just passed in the Wisconsin Senate…

Wisconsin senators approved a bill earlier this week allowing dead bodies to be dissolved in a chemical bath and disposed like sewage.

The bill, Senate Bill 228, authorizes a practice called alkaline hydrolysis, or “water cremation,” which liquifies the human body using a mixture of water, heat, and chemical agents, leaving only bones behind. The liquid is then dumped into the sewage system or boiled off, and bones can be crushed and deposited in an urn.

You have got to be pretty sick to want to liquify Grandma and Grandpa before dumping their remains into the sewer.

But that is who we are.

On all levels, we no longer respect life, and that is because as a society we are abandoning our faith.  Just check out these numbers…

The American Worldview Inventory (AWVI) 2021, an annual survey that examines the perspectives of adults aged 18 and over in the United States, found that while 57 percent of Millennials (born 1984-2002) consider themselves to be Christian, 43 percent “don’t know, care, or believe that God exists.”

Comparatively, 70 percent of Generation X (Gen X) Americans (born 1965-1983), 79 percent of Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964), and 83 percent of the Builder Generation (born 1927-1945) consider themselves to be Christian, while 31, 28, and 27 percent, respectively, “don’t know, care, or believe that God exists.”

America no longer resembles the nation that our founders sacrificed so much to establish, and if we stay on the path that we are currently on there is no future ahead for us.

But even though voices such as mine have been crying out for change for years, most of the population continues to sprint in the other direction.

We have already lost so much, and the “new normal” truly is horrible, but if America does not wake up things are only going to get worse.

***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.

Skyrocketing Lumber Prices Have Increased The Average Price Of A New Home By $35,872 In 1 Year

Do any of you remember when you could buy an entire house for $35,000?  There was a time in America when middle class Americans could buy a house and have it paid off in just a few years.  But now existing home prices have soared into the stratosphere, and lumber prices are making it ridiculously expensive to build new homes.  As you will see below, skyrocketing lumber prices have driven up the average price of a new home in the United States by almost $36,000 over the past 12 months.  That is absolutely nuts, but everyone agrees that even more inflation is on the way.

Of course it isn’t just lumber prices that are going haywire.  In California, the price of gasoline has almost reached five dollars a gallon in some areas, and the price for premium gasoline has almost reached six dollars…

Gas prices continued to increase in or around Southern California for the ninth day in a row. And that appeared to be a similar trend nationwide where other states were seeing an increase as well.

The average price of a gallon of regular gas in the Beverly Grove area on Saturday was $4.99 and $5.99 for premium.

We are being told that one of the reasons why the price of gasoline is spiking is due to a lack of tank truck drivers…

According to the National Tank Truck Carriers trade group, up to 25% of trucks are parked around the country because there are not enough qualified tank truck drivers. That number is up 15% from the beginning of last summer.

The demand for drivers took a hit when pandemic-induced lockdowns triggered steep declines in the gasoline market, and drivers opted for other jobs. However, the return to pre-pandemic numbers has been further undermined by unemployment benefits and stimulus checks keeping people away from jumping back into the workforce.

You can thank our politicians in Washington for this mess, and hopefully the driver shortage will just be temporary.

But if you think that the price of gasoline is bad now, just wait until the big war in the Middle East officially starts.

On Monday, the price of lumber continued to escalate dramatically.  According to the Wall Street Journal, lumber futures are now “more than four times the typical price this time of year”…

Lumber futures delivery later this month ended Monday at $1,575.60 per thousand board feet, a record and more than four times the typical price this time of year. Futures rose by the daily maximum allowed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange during nine of April’s 21 trading sessions.

But don’t worry, because the Federal Reserve insists that they have everything under control.

Hopefully they are on top of things, because we are rapidly getting into crisis territory.  As I mentioned above, rising lumber prices have driven the average price of a new home up by nearly $36,000 in the last 12 months…

Skyrocketing lumber prices that have tripled over the past 12 months have driven the price of an average new single-family home to rise by $35,872, according to new analysis by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), with the price spike threatening to hobble the momentum of the U.S. housing market, one of the bright stars of the recovery from the pandemic recession.

Thanks to the completely and utterly insane policies of our “leaders”, high inflation is here to stay, and it is going to be exceedingly painful.

At this point, even Warren Buffett is acknowledging that inflation is starting to become a major problem…

BECKY QUICK: I will ask this question from Chris Freed from Philadelphia. And whoever wants to take this on stage, “From raw material purchases by Berkshire subsidiaries, are you seeing signs of inflation beginning to increase?”

WARREN BUFFETT: Let me answer that, then Greg can get more into that. We’re seeing very substantial inflation – it’s very interesting. I mean, we’re raising prices. People are raising prices to us. And it’s being accepted. Take home-building. I mean, you know, the cost of– we’ve got nine home builders in addition to our manufactured housing operation, which is the largest in the country.

So we really do a lot of housing. The costs are just up, up, up. Steel costs, you know, just every day, they’re going up.

Flooding the system with trillions of new dollars was a really, really bad idea, but those that control the levers of power did it anyway.

Now we have way too many dollars chasing too few goods and services, and that is driving up prices and causing widespread shortages.  The following comes from an article about those shortages that was just posted by the Wall Street Journal…

Consumers are splurging on cars and furniture—and facing extended waits for delivery. Restaurants and gyms are reopening—and struggling to find workers. Factories and home builders are trying to ramp up—but are short on semiconductors or raw materials.

Our “leaders” are promising that the shortages are just temporary.

And they are also promising that the price spikes are just temporary too.

If everything that they are saying is true, everything will go back to “normal” eventually.

Do you believe them?

In Venezuela today, just about everyone is a millionaire.

But just about everyone is also living in poverty because the currency is essentially worthless.

For years, pundits have been warning about “the death of the dollar”, but now our “leaders” seem determined to murder our currency as rapidly as they can.

I wish that I could say that there is a quick and easy fix to this mess, but the truth is that there is no going back now.

The Federal Reserve has got to keep pumping more money into the financial system or the stock market will crash.

And the federal government is going to continue borrowing and spending trillions of dollars that we do not currently have in a desperate attempt to keep the population happy.

This story is heading for a very tragic ending, and if you can’t see that by now I don’t know what else to say.

***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.

Tens Of Millions Of “Working Poor” Americans Are Suffering Very Deeply Due To Biden’s Economic Policies

The Biden administration and the corporate media insist that we are witnessing an “economic recovery”, but it sure doesn’t feel like any sort of a “recovery” for America’s working poor.  Tens of millions of working Americans are trying to survive from month to month on stagnant or declining wages at a time when Biden’s economic policies have caused the cost of living to soar.  Our leaders in Washington always seem to think that spending more money is the solution to almost every crisis, and in recent months we have seen the money supply grow at an unprecedented rate.  Those that have been showered with government money are grateful, but all of this new money is also going to make life much tougher for those on the very bottom of the economic food chain.

Just because someone “has a job” does not mean that individual is doing okay in this economy. Greyhound bus driver Marvia Robinson has never had to file for unemployment benefits during the COVID pandemic, but her wages declined substantially, and she got way behind on her rent…

Last year, as the COVID-19 pandemic brought the nation’s travel economy to a standstill, Robinson’s hours were. cut, her pay dwindled – to as little as $65 for one two-week period – and she fell behind on her rent. By January, she owed $4,920.38. So she emailed Invitation Homes to ask if it would accept funds from a county program that gives landlords $4,000 in back rent.

In an email response reviewed by Reuters, Invitation Homes told Robinson the company was not participating in the program “due to the landlord restrictions,” without explaining what that meant. The company then sent Robinson an email with links to information about other government and nonprofit relief programs, as well as payday lenders, food banks, the Coalition for the Homeless and ways to make money by selling hair, plasma and donor eggs.

Various eviction moratoriums are protecting multitudes of people that are way behind on their rent, but they didn’t help in Marvia’s case, and she was tossed out on the street on March 9th…

In February, an Orange County judge approved Robinson’s eviction. On March 9, two sheriff’s deputies showed up at Robinson’s taupe two-story rental south of the city, bolted the doors and changed the locks.

So what is Marvia supposed to do now?

She works extremely hard, but it still wasn’t enough to keep her from being tossed out into the cold.

Overall, Moody’s Analytics is projecting that 7 million Americans will owe a total of $40 billion in back rent by the end of May.

Like Marvia, many of those people actually have jobs.

When I asked Google how many Americans are classified as “working poor”, it gave me a number from 2018…

About 38.1 million people, or 11.8 percent of the nation’s population, lived below the official poverty level in 2018, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Needless to say, that number is almost certainly far higher by now thanks to the economic depression that we have experienced over the past year.

And guess which state now has the highest level of “functional poverty”?…

As the California Legislature churned toward adjournment last week, its members received another reminder that the state’s most vexing — and shameful — socioeconomic malady persists.

The Census Bureau reported that California still has the highest level of functional poverty of any state, averaging 18.2% of its 40 million residents impoverished during the three preceding years.

The state that has the most tech billionaires also has the most people living in poverty right now.

Isn’t that ironic?

In their desperation to jumpstart the economy, our leaders in Washington have been creating, borrow and spending money like this is no tomorrow.

Just look at what this has done to our money supply.  The following chart which comes directly from the Federal Reserve shows the stunning growth of M2 since the beginning of the pandemic…

Of course this was going to drive the cost of living higher, and food prices are one thing that I am watching very, very carefully.

Just a few days ago, Bloomberg published an article entitled “The Grocery Price Shock Is Coming to a Store Near You”…

Corn, wheat, soybeans, vegetable oils: A small handful of commodities form the backbone of much of the world’s diet and they’re dramatically more expensive, flashing alarm signals for global shopping budgets.

This week, the Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index — which tracks key farm products — surged the most in almost nine years, driven by a rally in crop futures. With global food prices already at the highest since mid-2014, this latest jump is being closely watched because staple crops are a ubiquitous influence on grocery shelves — from bread and pizza dough to meat and even soda.

Food prices have been aggressively rising for 10 months in a row, and there are several factors that are leading analysts to project that they will continue to rise in the months ahead…

The most recent crop spikes follow months of price gains fueled by booming import demand from China. Corn prices have doubled in the past year, while soybeans are up about 80% and wheat 30%. With China’s purchases continuing and a spate of adverse weather conditions threatening crops in Brazil and the U.S., there are few signs of respite.

As food prices move higher and higher, this will put additional stress on tens of millions of “working poor” Americans that are barely scraping by from month to month.

The good news is that nobody in the U.S. is starving at this point, but the same can’t be said about the rest of the world.

Global hunger is on the rise, and one expert is warning that things are starting to get really bad out there…

“The relentless rise in prices acts as a misery multiplier, driving millions deeper into hunger and desperation,” Chris Nikoi, the World Food Programme’s regional director for West Africa, said earlier this month. It’s “pushing a basic meal beyond the reach of millions of poor families who were already struggling to get by.”

As I detail in my most recent book, we are moving into a time when there will be horrific global famines.

We all know this is coming, and so we should be getting prepared ahead of time.

Of course there are tens of millions of Americans that can’t afford to get prepared because they don’t have any extra money at all each month.

With each passing day, more Americans are falling out of the middle class and into poverty, and everything that our leaders in Washington do seems to make things even worse.

***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.

America’s Upside Down Economy Just Took Another Bizarre Turn

Is this a good economy or a bad economy?  Well, that all depends on who you are talking to.  For most Americans, economic conditions have been absolutely horrible ever since the COVID pandemic first arrived.  More than 100,000 businesses have permanently shut down, approximately 10 million Americans are in danger of being evicted from their homes, and weekly unemployment claims have been above the old record set in the early 1980s every single week for nearly an entire year.  Meanwhile, the absolutely insane polices that the Federal Reserve and our politicians in Washington have been pursuing have made the wealthy far wealthier than ever before.  In early 2020, M1 was sitting at about 4 trillion dollars, and now it is up to 18 trillion dollars.  Much of that money has ended up in the pockets of the ultra-wealthy, and now they are spending it is some pretty odd ways.

For example, NFT art is one of the latest crazes.  You can’t hang NFT art on your wall, but that isn’t stopping people from paying ridiculous amounts of money for it.  In fact, things have gotten so crazy that one film director has decided to sell audio clips of himself farting as NFTs…

A Brooklyn-based film director is simultaneously mocking and attempting to profit off the cryptocurrency craze for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by selling a year’s worth of fart audio clips recorded in quarantine.

“If people are selling digital art and GIFs, why not sell farts?” Alex Ramírez-Mallis, 36, told The Post of his dank addition to the blockchain-based NFT market.

You would have to be absolutely nuts to purchase such a thing, but apparently someone has already purchased one clip for 85 dollars…

Individual fart recordings are also available for 0.05 Ethereum, or about $85 a pop. The gassy group has so far sold one, to an anonymous buyer.

“If the value increases, they could have an extremely valuable fart on their hands,” he said.

Pizza Hut has decided that they want to get in on the NFT craze as well.

In Canada, the company originally listen an NFT of a pizza slice for 18 cents, but it ended up selling for $8,824…

Pizza Hut Canada has announced it is releasing “1 Byte Favourites,” aka digital images of pizza, as non-fungible tokens. “Pizza Hut believes no world should exist without pizza, especially their pan pizza. That’s why they wanted to make sure it was enshrined in the digital universe,” they said in a release. Each week the company will release a new image of a pizza slice, each of a different recipe, for purchase on Rarible. The first-ever “slice” was listed for $0.0001 ETH (a cryptocurrency the equivalent of 18 cents), but wound up being sold for $8,824.

This is madness, and it is also a grave insult to all of those that are deeply suffering out there.

Could it be possible that we are rapidly approaching our own “let them eat cake” moment?

As the ultra-wealthy continue to throw their money around in absurd ways, most people are just struggling to get by from month to month.  On Thursday, we learned that another 770,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week…

Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show that 770,000 Americans filed first-time jobless claims in the week ended March 13, higher than the 700,000 forecast by Refinitiv economists.

Weekly jobless claims have remained stubbornly high for months, hovering around four times the typical pre-crisis level, although it’s well below the peak of almost 7 million that was reached when stay-at-home orders were first issued a year ago in March.

After all this time, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits each week is still about four times higher than pre-pandemic levels.

And we just learned that retail sales fell pretty dramatically during the month of February…

Americans shopped less in February, leading retail sales to fall 3% on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

It was a much steeper drop than the 0.5% decline economists had predicted, according to Refinitiv.

Bad weather across many states were part of the reason sales declined last month.

When things go badly, they love to blame the weather.

Of course the new stimulus checks that Americans are now receiving should help to boost retail sales temporarily.

But at this point there are no plans to cut checks every month, and any short-term assistance will only briefly alleviate the long-term suffering that so many Americans are enduring.

We are currently in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and a lot more pain is on the horizon.

Even though I write about this stuff on a daily basis, I was surprised to learn that the results of a recent survey show that finances have now become the number one source of stress for the American people…

WalletHub’s new Coronavirus Money Survey also reveals that the nation’s focus is now shifting from the virus to finances. The survey of over 750 Americans in March 2021 finds money is now the biggest stressor around the country.

Three in 10 respondents say money is their greatest concern this year, a 15-percent increase over last year. COVID-19 is still the top stressor for 28 percent of Americans. As coronavirus safety measures fade however, researchers find people are getting back to worrying about how to make ends meet.

If you don’t know how you are going to pay the bills this month, that can be a source of stress that never leaves you day or night.

Those that have gone through this sort of emotional torment know exactly what I am talking about.

So when the ultra-wealthy throw their money away on “farting art” or “Pizza Hut art”, that is like rubbing dirt in the faces of tens of millions of Americans that are desperately trying to figure out some way to survive from month to month.

The ultra-wealthy can continue to flaunt their wealth, but already we are seeing the rise of the “Robinhood mentality” that so many have warned about.

When things get bad enough, the poor will start venturing into rich neighborhoods, and they won’t be there for a social visit.

We still have relative stability for this brief moment, but it won’t last very long 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.

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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