[stupandaus]

A few things to note:

1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse.

2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce.

3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1]

4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment since they were not covered prior to the passing of the senate bill last night.

This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA

[luma]

Further, unemployment benefits are managed by the states, and those states are running web services which typically see a few hundred hits a day. They are now trying to process tens of thousands of new records each day, and at least in MI the service is absolutely not up to the task.

My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully file, the rest are continuing to attempt to get the state web site to work today, while more people pile in.

These numbers are going to get much, much worse.

[taylodl]

Somewhere there is an architect saying "I told you so!" I can almost guarantee the requirement was to handle several hundred requests per day, an architect pointed out if we get deluged then we won't be able to handle it, so maybe they were able to get them to allow for one or two thousand requests per day.

Now of course we don't know what the architecture of this system is and what the deltas in cost would have been to allow this to scale-out more - but I do know that all too often the more robust solution giving you much greater protection and lower cost down the road is often discarded if it costs even just 5%-10% more. Then the day comes when the people making these decisions get caught flat-footed and they try to blame everyone but themselves. It doesn't always happen like this - but it happens a lot.

[jrumbut]

This reminds me of an old story about an engineer who took initiative and automated the accounts receivable process at his company, now they get paid 25% faster! He shows his boss and gets a promotion.

He decides to do it again, this time with accounts payable, and is promptly fired.

[_ea1k]

I think that is small-think. The technical solution is only part of the problem and scaling up all systems to meet the .1% case seldom makes sense. They were smart to save 5-10%.

[sushisource]

Eh.... On the flip side, processing and storing some simple text forms should be able to handle 1000s of simultaneous users on one box.

So, probably like most software of this nature, the reason it's not scaling is simply because the people who made it probably weren't the greatest engineers on the block.

[chaz]

These are the same kinds of assumptions that lead engineers to think they can build a [any product] clone in a weekend. It's unlikely that the problem or constraints are nearly as simple as one may think.

Consider: single auth across all the state's services, external APIs, identity verification, address verification, employer ID verification, federal/military ID verification, income/tax verification, phone verification, bank account information, translation into multiple languages, accessibility features, etc. Also, there's probably a lot of legacy infrastructure and process.

Also, if "ability to burst to 10x normal filings per week that might happen once every 40 years" wasn't in the spec, I think they were right not to engineer for it.

[taylodl]

Admittedly it's a value call. My thought is generally if it's a small incremental cost that greatly increases the robustness then you should go for it. But - sometimes the money or time just isn't there. I'm bothered more by the people not even wanting to have the discussion than by those who do a summary analysis and decide it's not worth it.

[freepor]

The 0.1% case happens. And if it’s going to seriously wreck lives when it happens then you should solve for it. Does Instagram need to handle the 0.1% case? No. But the unemployment website should.

[_ea1k]

Unemployment forms being delayed by a day or two to deal with poor queuing will not "wreck lives".

[marmaduke]

Yes but for every architect there's an antiarchitect saying YAGNI!!1

[RHSeeger]

You spelled pragmatist wrong.

[MattSayar]

Wow, just found what my state (CO) is doing to help manage the influx. Talk about a low-tech workaround.

>IMPORTANT NOTICE: Because of the high volume of claims, we are asking that you help us help you and our greater community.

>If you need to file an unemployment claim and your last name begins with the letter A - M, file a claim on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, or after 12 noon on Saturday.

>If you need to file an unemployment claim and your last name begins with the letter N - Z, file a claim on Monday, Wednesday, Friday or before 12 noon on Saturday.

[josephorjoe]

Ooooh, like gas rationing in the 70s.

[Melting_Harps]

> Wow, just found what my state (CO) is doing to help manage the influx. Talk about a low-tech workaround.

> Ooooh, like gas rationing in the 70s.

I wasn't born back then, but I heard about that being based on License plates at a few car meetups by the older guys in the group and I had the same thought when I heard that on CPR.

Odd, but it could work if you have total compliance; lets see how that pans out.

[billyhoffman]

Distributed load balancing!

[TremendousJudge]

well as long as it works...

[Demiurge]

As a developer I immediately though of the power of queues. Twenty people trying to submit same form does not work for everyone, but a queue processing one person at a time might allow the twenty people to submit within a short time. It is flattening the curve! If I was contracted to fix this ASAP, I would set up an nginx front-end proxy config that doesn't allow more than X sessions and suggest a time in the future when they could try again.

[driverdan]

Having worked on this type of application in the past they should find a new company to work with if they can't handle this traffic. We were handling hundreds of requests per second with ease 10 years ago. That was with MySQL and the app running on the same server.

It doesn't take many resources to show the user a form, validate it, and save to a DB.

[dubcanada]

A bunch of armchair developers seem to have been summoned to tell the Federal government how to handle form submissions for an extremely security and privacy intense application using their fancy modern techniques.

You are talking about comparing a basic web form with an application for unemployment benefits which must go into a federal tax database and be processed using a what I assume is a garbage mainframe system.

It not only needs to be validated, it needs to securely store records, be able to compare them, and hook up to the system that handles payments, etc.

They can't just circumvent it and dump it into some silly Amazon or MySQL database and call it a day. That would require the employees to basically copy and paste that data into the actual warehouse and considering they have 3+ million to go through as it is making it easy for them to process is just as important as allowing people to submit.

For the time being the correct response is a queue gate.

Stop being silly.

[devonkim]

Yep, USDS and 18F folks would have to agree with you here. The arcane crap that we have to deal with in payment and government information systems is beyond frustrating and makes it extremely tough. I read an article about having to fix a multi-decade Cisco router bug to get CI/CD and automated deployments working after USDS / 18F started setting up faster deployments but still needed to figure out how to deal with legacy stateful DB connections.

The reality of government paperwork systems on the backend is much, much closer to this hell and is part of why so many like myself ran screaming from public sector because when you see so many peers doing so well at FAANGS, why would you subject yourself to something that resists change and wants to keep it the same way? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2014/03/2...

[x0x0]

The point is that backend pain shouldn't stop you from accepting it on the front end and putting it into a queue. Making the problem of getting the application through backend systems the states' to deal with, not the applicants'.

[Demiurge]

I also completely agree with this sentiment. A gov't form could be an unsightly complex beast that can't be re-architected, sometimes, ever.

[vsareto]

They could, they just don't want to pay for it. The government has no interest in being known for easily handling a huge spike of traffic during a crisis. They can just take the lower road and get by with less and saying 'try again later'. There's no repercussions here because it's the government.

Hence mainframe maintainers should really move to charging $1 million/year in a decade or two.

[lern_too_spel]

Unemployment benefits are handled by the states, not by the federal government.

[blaser-waffle]

In Canada, it isn't. The parent's username suggests they talkin about the CAN.

https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/ei.html

In the US, though, it's by-state.

[C1sc0cat]

None of those comments really help explain why the bottle necks.

If the form has to go into a mainframe well just set up an asynconous Queue

[macintux]

Validation is the problem. If someone thinks they’ve successfully applied, rejecting them asynchronously is often worse than not letting them apply in the first place.

[Dylan16807]

It's "armchair" to say "you get what you deserve if your entire system depends on garbage"?

...okay, whatever you say.

[dubcanada]

I called it garbage, but really neither of us know.

[onion2k]

It doesn't take many resources to show the user a form, validate it, and save to a DB.

I bet that's what the previous developers thought.

What happens if you need to validate the form data against an external service that's coming and going due to the traffic spike?

What if your database is rejecting transactions occasionally?

What happens when your backup process locks all the database tables?

How do you reject duplicate form submissions from people hammering the submit button? Do you query the database to find previous submissions?

What happens when a scriptkiddie decides it'd be fun to DDOS the site? How do you differentiate good traffic from bad traffic?

What do you do when the cloud provider runs out of space and you can't scale up any more (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22691926)?

You need to think of all of these things and many, many more to run a robust online service that can handle spikes hundreds of times bigger than the usual level. It's really not straightforward or simple.

[Dylan16807]

Or it's a much simpler problem that they didn't make it semi-fast because it didn't need to be semi-fast.

When "hundreds of times the usual level" is still only 50 page loads per second, and 10 milliseconds of CPU per page would be extreme overkill for anything written in a reasonable way, it actually is straightforward.

[GordonS]

It's not just CPU though, but IO - I've worked with horrible enterprise systems before that had response times measured in seconds.

[driverdan]

All of those items are manageable. Some are simple setup or programming errors, some require a bit of added complexity but are normal in modern web apps.

[Demiurge]

Completely agree with the sentiment. I think most often it is inadequate default configuration that bottle-necks somewhere, that never got tested with more than a handful of users at a time. Going to a hundred highlights some bugs. going to 1000 others. On the other hand, I have worked on a project for USDA and they had 10 year old servers running 15 year old software and did not allow any system administration, while the system admins were some unknown government employees completely inaccessible.

I have had to build python distribution completely in home/user-space in some cases, working on conservatively managed servers.

[projektfu]

Usually it's not so much the form that causes things to fall down but some validation step that they are trying to do synchronously, that might have to access an IBM mainframe, and things time out. When you're getting a few an hour, it's not a big deal.

[noelsusman]

At this point introducing a new company could cause more problems than it solves, and I think it's understandable to not be prepared for a volume of jobless claims that is almost an order of magnitude more than at any point in US history.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

Put the web form (plain static assets JS/CSS/HTML) on a globally accessible CDN. Then use SQS intake for each unemployment application form. Then firehouse it out, wherever it needs to go, at a rate which you can realistically deal with it.

Queuing access to the form itself and telling someone to wake up at 4:52 AM so they can then merely access the static assets is a less-than-desirable user experience.

[Demiurge]

It is more desirable than 504, and first thing I would do in 15 minutes with zero context. If I can get more context, of course something like your solution is more desirable, depending on the issue. It would take some time to figure whether it is necessary to bring in AWS or just database connection pooler, or whatever.

[judge2020]

Even typeform/Google Forms would be better suited for the task.

[alasdair_]

>Even typeform/Google Forms would be better suited for the task.

And now you've given a private company access to market-moving unemployment data. And a million other issues, especially legal ones.

The technology part in and of itself isn't that difficult, it's all of the constraints (and, often, mountains of laws) that are the bigger issue.

[jkaljundi]

In related news on Queue-it: https://tech.eu/brief/queue-it-funding/

[_curious_]

Solid company

[pjc50]

The matching UK system has a (huge) queue in it: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480546/Huge-queues-fo...

[Demiurge]

Is there a human factor in processing these?

[OJFord]

Ocado (the IaaS for online supermarkets company, and, in the UK, online-only supermarket itself) has done this in response to the increased demand, and makes you wait in a 'virtual queue' (virtual relative to what in America you call a 'line-up', but we call a 'queue', at a physical supermarket) before you can place or edit your order.

[commandlinefan]

> If I was contracted to fix this ASAP

You’re assuming that the people who built it in the first place (or the people that may or may not be contracted to fix it later) know or care. Remember, this is government contracting we’re talking about - lowest bidder wins. How do you win the lowest bid? By doing it as cheap and quick as you can. That means hiring inexperienced/cheap developers who can build something that looks like it will work for far less money than you can build something that actually will.

[murph-almighty]

Secondhand story:

I briefly interned with a state judiciary's IT department around 2015 and got to get lunch with the CIO. He described to me how most court filings in the state had been manual prior to 2008 when the mortgage crisis hit and judges in the tax courts got _slammed_ with cases surrounding foreclosures. This , in turn, drove a need to develop a platform to automate the process of filing a case. It started with the tax court and gradually expanded to automate filings for other court divisions as well (e.g. Family, Civil).

I wouldn't be shocked if the revelation of "holy shit no one can file for unemployment" drove such an investment. I honestly think the next generation of politicians should take a page from product owners by isolate some shitty process that they'd have jurisdiction over, and finding some way to automate it. Bonus points if it's right before a watershed moment- imagine if someone had considered the problem you described prior to the coronavirus epidemic.

[enraged_camel]

I mean, you can tell the numbers are extremely inaccurate via just a simple, cursory glance at the report.

Pennsylvania reported 378k claims.

California reported... 186k claims.

Yesterday, California's governor said they've received more than 1 million claims since March 13th (so, over a 12 day period from the 13th to the 25th). This DOL report covers March 14th through the 21st.

Are we to believe that the remaining 800k+ people all filed on March 13th, or March 22nd through the 25th?

But there's more. Utah reported an increase of only 9 claims compared to the week before. They went from 1,305 to 1,314.

Then, New York, where more than half of Covid-19 cases in the US are, reported only 80k?

[JMTQp8lwXL]

As of 3/21. Lockdown in California began in the evening of 3/19. Still not enough time for the numbers to react.

[_curious_]

"Are we to believe that the remaining 800k+ people all filed on March 13th, or March 22nd through the 25th?"

I could believe it over the 22-25 stretch.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Especially since "filed" may here mean when the paperwork was finally able to snake its way into some particular system.

[fivre]

They also tend to have some... interesting features dictated by the state UI office. When I'd applied in Wisconsin about 6 years back the site stopped accepting form submissions outside business hours.

I assume some less computer-literate higher up thought that someone needed to be around to actually accept the form, same as in-person submissions.

[alexpetralia]

I confirmed that the state's unemployment website has slowed to a crawl (if it is working at all).

[pc86]

2008 took months to unravel because of the nature of the crisis. Foreclosure is a process and in some areas can take up to 6 months or more from the time you stop paying your mortgage.

Here we had state governments practically shutting down their economies overnight. Overnight, every restaurant in my state was no longer allowed to have dine in. Only maybe half in my local area stayed open for carryout, and at least 80% of those have closed in the few weeks since.

The speed at which this happened is astronomical, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be multiple times worse than 2008. Just that the onset was very quick.

[rmrm]

The biggest risk stated in 2008 was contagion to "main street" economy, which did eventually occur to some degree.

This virus and fallout went directly to the main street economy (of the entire world at same time) and stopped it cold.

I think its entirely unknown what the ultimate ramifications are of this cold stop to the world economy. But I see no reason to think its not bigger than 2008.

[sciencewolf]

This is huge. It may be a months of jobless claims compacted into a week.

[tibbydudeza]

Also the knockon effect on landlords ... many bossiness want some sort of rental relief or those with limited cash flow are saying they are not going to pay.

[pc86]

Small business owners almost always have to personally guarantee commercial rents. "My business doesn't have revenue so I'm not paying" is simply not a valid response unless the owner is willing to take it the whole way to bankruptcy, which I'm sure we'll see a surge of in the coming months from the more aggressive landlords. It varies by state but my state is very forgiving to residential tenants and very unforgiving for commercial tenants (I say this as a former commercial tenant who owed past due rent at one point).

The SBOs with resources will just have to continue paying rent out of pocket, or face liens against their personal assets.

[cmurf]

Right. Quite a lot of SBOs never thought this day would come, that they had no choice but to sign such agreements. Tenant ignored the reality of these unfair and untenable agreements. And here we are.

My response to a landlord insisting on 100% rent for property, that just become non-revenue generating by order of the government, or else they will take my personal property? Force majeure, I owe you $0, this contract is null and void. Shall we re-negotiate?

Liens are going to require court judgements. That system is about to get plugged up with cases. Most SBOs and landlords are going to have to re-negotiate. Landlords will talk deferred rents and suggest SBOs get one of these SBA 3.75% loans, in order to make the landlord 100% whole, eventually. SBOs should seek better advice than that which comes from their landlord. SBOs could do much worse than mimicking the likes of Subway, Mattress Firm, etc. by insisting haircuts are coming, fast. And by much worse, I mean, paying the landlord 100% and making them whole.

[jachee]

Good. Screw the landlords. Let them liquidate and bring the market back down to earth a bit.

[cko]

Do landlords drive up prices? I know for residential properties, homeowners are willing to pay way higher prices than what makes sense for landlords.

I don't understand the vitriol towards landlords. Do people get angry at the bank for lending money so they can buy a house?

[pc86]

> I don't understand the vitriol towards landlords.

It's because real estate is - the vast majority of time - a tried and true way to accrue wealth, and it takes a least some measure of wealth (or a lot of personal risk) to get into it. People get angry when they see folks they think of as "less deserving" with money, and literally the only thing you need to get into real estate is money. So there are a lot of "dumb" people doing it, making a lot of money, seemingly for no reason other than they own the right building.

I've dealt with commercial landlords before and they can be ruthless. As a commercial tenant, you're most likely paying everything. Your rent (with yearly increases well beyond inflation), pro rata insurance, pro rata real estate and school taxes, common area maintenance (CAM) fees that can be thousands a month between all tenants for snow to get plowed ten times a year and the grass to get mowed.

If you're a low margin business it's easy to look at half your revenue leaving the door to your landlord who (in your eyes) has zero risk and provides no value and get angry. But I owned a brick and mortar business for 4 years and had 3 landlords in that time because they kept going bankrupt. So there's definitely some risk associated with it.

[blackrock]

Most landlords raised rents just because they could.

They were profitable where they were, but since the next guy raised his rents, then they jacked up their own rents.

This is what makes people angry at landlords. And often times, your rent increased, but your pay didn’t, so you get squeezed both ways.

[wil421]

The financial crisis didn’t prevent most people from spending money on entertainment or eating out. People scaled back spending or went to cheaper places.

People are fearful and a lot of folks are supposed to be sheltering in place. Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference.

I was in the restaurant industry during the last crisis. Lots of places stopped hiring and slowed down but business didn’t suddenly stop.

[duxup]

>Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference.

Yeah I've been doing a fair amount of takeout and places where you had dozens of people ... operating with two or three people now.

[alharith]

My brother is a restaurant owner and reports that despite volume being down, profit is up due to less overhead. Others in the restaurant industry are reporting the same. When we come out on the other side of this, I think a lot of businesses are going to rethink a lot of things they held on to as infallible truths.

Sorry as many mentioned, yes the key ingredient is takeout: This is a fast casual italian / pizza restaurant. I find fast casual restaurants doing just fine in my area. It's traditional sit downs that are struggling.

[wil421]

Almost every restaurant owner I know is about to fold or taking emergency loans. From people with several franchised sandwich shops to stand alone restaurants.

Who is reporting profits are up?

[bitbuilder]

I'm guessing they're confusing profit and margin. It wouldn't surprise me if margins were higher now, but I have a hard time believing overall profits are up, anywhere.

Especially when you consider a lot of restaurants make a good chunk of their profit on alcohol sales. While many are offering alcohol to go, I think most of us are picking it up from the corner store instead.

[kamarg]

Anecdotally, the owner of one of the nearby pizza places mentioned that both profits and margins are up for her. Of course pizza places historically have a large amount of delivery already. I imagine the current crisis has driven more customers to them at the expense of places that are traditionally dine-in only.

[sbuttgereit]

Did his business already have a robust take-out business? If so, I wouldn't be surprised by this comment. I would expect revenues, for awhile, to be the same or even increase... though as individual customers circumstances turn less certain I would expect that to decline over time. Certainly there's less labor overhead, and slightly less expense for utilities, cleaning supplies, etc. But larger pieces, like rents, would remain the same absent some sort of accommodation for the crisis.

A business that didn't have a robust take-out business prior to the crisis I would expect to fare worse. You'd have to do things like get the word out that you are a take out business for one... and some couldn't likely make that transition. Would you order fine dining take out? Sure the food might be good, but half the reason to go to a good restaurant, rather than a cheaper one, is the service.

[itronitron]

My personal experience has been that quality of restaurant/food/dining experience has always been negatively correlated with number of tables, or even total sq. ft.

[duxup]

I think fast casual already did that and going say delivery only ... might be a dead end for most small businesses.

Especially as folks get out of their homes and WANT to be out and about ;)

[thaumasiotes]

Is the change something that can be stabilized? Or when people have the option to eat out again, will delivery-only restaurants suffer too much from competition with eat-in restaurants? (Assuming there's some level of customer preference for eating in?)

Now I'm curious about pizza places. Most pizza places offer seating. But I feel like Domino's might in fact be delivery-only.

[bluedino]

They might be making more money on sales vs staff right now but anyone who has a rent payment isn't going to cover it with takeout alone.

[greedo]

For most major fast food franchises, the drive through constitutes a majority of the food sales. Labor also constitutes the largest line item on a P&L, so if you can work it right, you might be able to make it work. Especially if you're getting assistance (in the form of suspended franchise/royalty fees).

[bluedino]

Cheesecake Factory can't make rent this month - https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/business/cheesecake-factory-a...

[Jupe]

Of course there's less overhead, they are employing fewer people (or drastically reducing paid hours for employees). That's kind of the point of the parent article.

[phasnox]

This. It makes you wonder how much long the confinement can really last.

[toomuchtodo]

I imagine those less at risk will eventually give up on confinement and continue on with their lives, forcing those at risk (risk factors, 60+, immunocompromised) to remain confined voluntarily or risk a greater chance of death by venturing out. Those not at risk (younger and healthier) will be prioritized for triage and ventilator access if they do get sick.

You can't expect people to shelter in place indefinitely, and they won't.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I think the next couple of weeks are going to be eye opening - we're going to get a lot of reports of deaths, even of the young and healthy, which we're already seeing. That should steel the collective resolve to last a while here. People are talking of lifting the restrictions and our collective endurance and things have barely gotten going. It's really complaining about the length of the red light when it's just turned yellow.

Naturally people aren't going hole up for a year, but we have to stop acting antsy when we've been in our houses a week or two.

Edit: I'm assuming the government does its job and takes care of its people so that they can do the right thing here.

[marvin]

The government is passing relief package of 18,000 dollars for every citizen of the USA. That's more than enough money to tide things over if it's distributed well, in a way that incentivizes the right things.

Unforunately, a very small portion of that money will go to individuals who have lost their jobs, and a very large portion will go to companies that were run on razor-thin balance sheets, ready to topple at the first sign of trouble. No incentives to run things properly the next time around, and limited help for regular people. While costing everyone a fortune in the form of inflation the next few years.

[tstewart161]

I’ve heard this point made a lot, that these “bailouts” are in any way equivalent to previous bailouts based on poor management and immoral business practices.

These aren’t the same. This shutdown (however justified) is because of the govt. If the government demands you shut down your business, or that you can’t go to work, you deserve to be compensated for that. If the government hadn’t mandated it, young people would still be out working and spending. Those businesses would be fine. If the govt wants to shut everything down, they have to pay people for it.

[ars]

If those companies go under they take a lot of jobs with them. It seems more efficient to prop them up instead of making direct payments to the employees who would have lots their jobs.

Especially since a lot of the companies are only asking for loans, not handouts.

[toomuchtodo]

> Naturally people aren't going hole up for a year, but we have to stop acting antsy when we've been in our houses a week or two.

It's natural to be antsy if you've lost your job, have no social safety net, and can't pay for food or your rent.

Either pay them to stay home, or don't be surprised when they leave to attempt to make a living to survive. They're already at risk of being homeless and destitute, so COVID matters much less to them. And I don't blame them.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I agree. Let's pay people so that everyone can do the right thing in this time of crises.

[evan_]

> I'm assuming the government does its job

What has led you to make this assumption?

[brewdad]

State and local governments are doing a good job in many locales. Assuming more Governors don't follow the jackwagon leading Mississippi and override local efforts, the situation should improve despite the lack of leadership and execution at the federal level.

[SketchySeaBeast]

It could very well be a bad assumption, but efforts seem ot be being made now to get people support. Hopefully they get there or this is going to be really bad.

[sharken]

Got any data to support your claim, otherwise I could argue that risk factors, 60+, immunocompromised are the MAJOR concerns as stated above. Looking to Italy and Spain seems to confirm this view.

[sixothree]

Everything suggests this is taking a dark turn in the coming days. I'm doing my best to stay safe.

[wpietri]

Does it? Let's set aside the scorekeeping systems we use (money, profit, ownership, wealth) for a moment. I see no reason to think we can't get people properly fed indefinitely. We'll still have power, water, sewage, bandwidth. And it's not like the shut down businesses will evaporate or anything. The buildings will be there. The equipment will be there. 97%+ of the staff will still be around.

Eventually we'll have a vaccine, and life can go back to normal (if we want). The main problem in the interim is keeping everybody from freaking out because the before-times social constructions weren't really set up for a global pandemic. But we can fix that if we want.

[crazy1van]

> We'll still have power, water, sewage, bandwidth

Don’t forget about food. There’s a lot of complexity and people involved in getting food from a farm to your local restaurants and grocery stores.

If it gets really bad and even a fraction of people in these industries stop working, stay-at-home life might get a lot less comfortable.

[wpietri]

As you can see from the sentence before the one you quoted, I didn't forget about it.

I agree there's a lot of complexity there. But it's still a relatively small slice of the population. A friend is a farmer; she's just carrying ahead farming. Compared with urban life, she's been "socially distancing" for years. For the more dense parts of the chain, we need to take other infection-prevention measures. But food production is already pretty good at keeping things clean, and the rest we can work on.

[vkou]

Food production is essential work, so nobody is stopping it.

We are about to have millions unemployed. Any job vacancy will be trivial to fill.

I wouldn't be concerned about the food supply.

[carapace]

It's worth remembering how efficient our modern food systems have become that less than 3 out of 100 people are enough to work them.

That said, it wouldn't hurt anything to start a "victory garden", it's the right time of year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden (but that's a good idea anyway, orthogonal to the virus.)

[op03]

Things stop all the time.

You just need to find the right event for comparison. In this case probably the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami or the 2011 East Japan Earthquake (Tsunami, Fukushima Nuke plant etc)

[sbuttgereit]

I don't think that comparison works.

There, you had relatively short duration disasters where very soon afterwards, coordinated efforts were dedicated to putting the pieces back together.

Now, most of the press and leadership seems to be thinking only about how to manage the health related consequences of an ongoing crisis. I really don't hear anyone strategizing how to put the pieces back together or how to contain the crisis (note that I did not say contain the disease) so things don't fall apart so completely. There is a profound absence of thought amongst those in decision-making positions, at least insofar as I can see.

[RandomBacon]

Everyone can go right back to work after the event is over in a few minutes.

This more comparable to a nuclear bomb where the area is still radioactive and people cannot go back without PPE.

Edit: and like another reply said, this isn't local, so it's more like multiple nuclear bombs in multiple countries across the globe.

[tathougies]

So they don't stop all the time. Those events you gave did not cause 3 billion people to be forced to stay at home. A tsunami or earthquake is isolated to a particular place. It may affect a few million. This is a different order of magnitude

[nck4222]

>4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment since they were not covered prior to the passing of the senate bill last night.

You (and others) are probably aware, but worth pointing out that these people still can not currently file for unemployment benefits until the house passes the bill, the senate approves any house amendments to the bill, and the president signs the bill.

The house isn't voting on this until tomorrow at the earliest, so there's still a ways to go.

There's probably others as well that have had their pay reduced, that are waiting to see what's going to be passed before filing for benefits. Anecdotally I know of some software engineers in this boat.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

I'm kind of confused by what it means for a gig worker to become unemployed; specifically the criteria. Is it along the lines of "I normally drive Uber. There are no riders anymore. Therefore, I can't collect income?" I mean, it'd be hard to verify such a statement is fact. A gig worker could just stop logging into Uber, then file an unemployment application. I hope there's an angle to this I'm missing.

[jartelt]

You likely will need to prove that your unemployment or lack of ability to work was caused by COVID-19. So doctors note, test result, order to stop work by governor, etc.

[cableshaft]

Also doesn't take into account those who have had reduced hours or salary at their jobs, like my wife's entire company (at least the employees that didn't get furloughed at her company). She got reduced to 3 days a week, for a 40% salary reduction.

[pengaru]

> 3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1]

This should be normalized to be per-capita, comparing absolute figures is distorted by population growth. The US was only 230M people in 1982, 100M less than today.

After normalizing it's more like 3.9x.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

3.9m ~ 5m are pretty similar compared to 670k...

[claudeganon]

> This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel.

I think we need to couple the two events a little more closely. The 2008 Financial Crisis accelerated inequality, political instability, asset inflation, and the rise of precarious work to such a degree that the damage of this hit is being greatly compounded.

To my mind, the hole that was the 2008 crisis was papered over and someone just came by and dropped a brick on it.

[TheNorthman]

The former Minister of Finance in greece and current MP Yanis Varoufakis has made the same connection [0]. He argues that it's the same crisis, but that the crisis has transformed, so that the solution can't be the same as in 2008. E.g. the ability of China to offer massive renminbi-swaps is set into question because they are being hit hard by this crisis. The weren't hit during 2008.

He also questions whether the US will be willing to offer the same condition-less USD-swaps.

[0]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OLfHpvJKNg0 is an interview where he explains his position.

[malandrew]

> the rise of precarious work

I'm not going to disagree that there was a rise in precarious work, but I think many people don't realize how valuable having this work as option is.

Brazil has been economically struggling for almost a decade now, which is the same decade when this type of work appeared. For many people in Brazil this has been a godsend. It's provided an employment option where previously there would have been none. The option wasn't between precarious work and non-precarious work. It was between precarious work and no work.

Precarious work at least lets workers get back on the work ladder and just being on the ladder makes it easier to grab the next rung on the ladder and pull themselves up. It's especially valuable that the precarious work also tends to be flexible. This lets people study for new skills and go to interviews, which is something much harder to do with scheduled work.

The economic situation in Brazil would have been far worse if another million or more people doing this precarious work had been unemployed for the last decade instead.

[marcosdumay]

It's not that simple, because up to some point, precarious work outcompetes non-precarious work, reducing the later one.

You will see all kinds of arguments and researches, but actually nobody is really sure about what that point is, and if it is a net positive or negative for workers. To make it worse, Brazil is in a kind of unique situation because official work is extremely regulated, while precarious work is well accepted and widespread (and not as new as you think), so one can not even apply the lessons from most of the world.

[mikorym]

Not from the US, so not quite in phase with how things work. What can this tell us about actual unemployment and actual people that won't have a job now (short, medium or forever)?

[cloverich]

Most businesses do not have capacity to pay workers and rather than hold out, some are terminating immediately so their employees can claim unemployment benefits. I know for example of Dental offices (which in Texas are mandated closed until April 21st I believe) are doing this, but have every intention of re-hiring the same staff the moment they are allowed to re-open. I'm not sure this is the typical case, but its certainly a subset.

[rdslw]

I have to say, agressiveness of USA capitalism is shocking to watch.

moral bonus: ability to 'explain' it that is just because you can claim unemployment benefit.

[mikorym]

Just my personal opinion here, but one should be careful to view the pandemic through the socialism vs. capitalism lens. I think it's better to focus on the particulars of events rather classifying them as in on of the two camps.

[nerdponx]

Hard to say. Some of them might still be employed but with zero pay, others might have been laid off, and for others their employers just folded the business.

[rixrax]

And yet DJIA is up almost 1000 points. Is this the stimulus $$$ in work, or what is going on here?

[Obi_Juan_Kenobi]

Markets are complicated. Especially in the short term, you have large forces that aren't concerned only with future expected value.

For instance, if you manage a fund that sold substantially on the way down, you now have a great deal of cash you need to do something with. Considering a 'local bottom' has been found, you may be very interested in trying to re-enter the market now. The risk of waiting for a lower entry begins to compete heavily with the risk of missing a buying opportunity.

[GhostVII]

Job losses are expected and are priced in (which is why it crashed a couple weeks ago). The job losses were less than some expected so the market went up.

[charlieflowers]

Unfortunately, it's called "a good time to get the heck out if you haven't already."

[GhostVII]

Panic selling is generally a poor strategy. Feel free though I'd be happy to pick up some more cheap VGRO.

[cloudartisans]

You don’t think it’s a good time to “panic sell” when the market goes up 20% in just 3 days?

Edit: especially while the US corona curve is not showing any signs of slowing down.

[blackrock]

This has got to be a dead cat bounce.

Normally, when a company lays off workers, the market cheers, and the stock price goes up. Investors get to keep more of their money, and no longer have to pay out in expensive labor.

But this situation is quite different, in that the economy just came to a stop, for practically everyone. At some point, this has got to trickle up, and affect the larger corporations. People won’t fly, so airlines go bankrupt. Hotels go bankrupt. Travel Agencies go bankrupt. And on and on.

But of course, maybe Wall Street is expecting a bailout of the airlines, and other big businesses, so maybe that explains the optimism.

[thematt]

Unlikely. I suspect it's more likely month-end re-balancing.

[sct202]

I definitely know more people laid off this week than last week. No one was really sure how much business they could sustain with this whole thing going on, and now that there's been a full week and a partial week employers are starting to pull the plug.

[neycoda]

This goes to show how negatively-impacting ignoring health officials is.