This is looking 2001-dot-com-crash bad, but much, much faster.
It's worth remembering there are plenty of companies not laying people off, and "normal" will return eventually.
That said, I was watching The Big Short yesterday, and a line that I had noted before haunted me even more: "For every 1% unemployment goes up [in the USA], 40,000 people die".
> Assessing the short term health impact of the Great Recession in the European Union: a cross-country panel analysis
> Results
> Overall, during the recent recession, an increase of one percentage point in the standardised unemployment rate has been associated with a statistically significant decrease in the following mortality rates: all-cause-mortality (3.4%), cardiovascular diseases (3.7%), cirrhosis- and chronic liver disease-related mortality (9.2%), motor vehicle accident-related mortality (11.5%), parasitic infection-related mortality (4.1%), but an increase in the suicide rate (34.1%). In general, the effects were more marked in countries with lower levels of social protection, compared to those with higher levels.
Conclusions
> An increase in the unemployment rate during the Great Recession has had a beneficial health effect on average across EU countries, except for suicide mortality. Social protection expenditures appear to help countries “smooth” the health response to a recession, limiting health damage but also forgoing potential health gains that could otherwise result.
That seems pretty disingenuous given that the Great Depression was the lynchpin for World War 2 which directly resulted in the deaths of 75 million people.
Things might be different now in ways that now have a different impact, but if you want to feel better, there's evidence that the Great Depression did not cause an increase in people dying[1].
> Population health did not decline and indeed generally improved during the 4 years of the Great Depression, 1930–1933, with mortality decreasing for almost all ages, and life expectancy increasing by several years in males, females, whites, and nonwhites.
(Although, significantly, it does note that suicides increased, and another study found no increase in life expectancy, but no real change outside of suicides and car accidents.[2])
and the thing about suicides is, that the rates are really low compared to everything else... (even the flu... - at least in non-gun countries).
I think this is mainly fearmongering by the upper 0.1% seeing that now they might have to bear the "risk" they are always claiming to shoulder when taking in enormous returns on their capital... (e.g. in Germany currently most car-companies (BMW and VW are both largely family-owned) still pay their dividends, while their employees are getting unemployment benefits from the state...).
In the end history tells us, that people generally seem to prefer to stay alive however low the odds are. If this has significantly changed in the last 50 years, maybe we should think about what has changed that – I seriously doubt that a "let's go back to business" is the right approach in that case.
Of course ironically prosperity can be more dangerous dirtectly as risky "vices" like extreme sports and fast cars are expensive. The Kennedies tend to die doing activities restricted to or done far more often by the privledged.
Extreme sports may technically have a long term boost on life expextancy (from fitness) but short term would make a spike in accident deaths. I guess money is sort of the same way - better outcomes from affording healthcare but the temptation to take risks results in more immediate deaths.
There is the coping hypothesis, that coping with unemployment causes unhealthy behavior and death [1] and the latent sickness hypothesis [2], that unhealthy behavior is a cause of both unemployment and death. Anecdotally it makes sense - if you are an alcoholic or drug addict you are likely to lose your job as well as die as a result of your behavior - but the actual number of people who die is ostensibly hard to measure.
I'm guessing there'll be a lesser need to cope this time around since a lot of people will know a lot of other people who are unemployed. All of a sudden being unemployed might be the new normal and we'll all help each other cope
I don't think this is dot-com-crash bad yet, if you mean that tech workers specifically are in dire straits. The major Bay Area employers like Google, FB, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, etc haven't had layoffs; it's mostly small startups. Some of the large companies are even outperforming currently (Amazon and Netflix are at all-time highs).
But if you mean dot-com-crash bad in terms of the economy in general crashing, oh man are you right. This is an economic free-fall for most of America.
Given that peopled art forced to stay at home with families, I am a little worried that other negative statistics are going to rise. I expect we will see an increase in divorces and abuses of various types. A lot of people need, but are not getting personal space.
You may be interested in the short-squeeze hypothesis, which suggests the current rally was triggered by technical factors and will soon peak and evaporate.
The Netherlands tested for antibodies in blood donor serum last week, preliminary result is that 3% of people have them. And not all of them show full immunity.
If we relax quarantine measures, the virus just comes back immediately. This is going to stay with us for years.
Even if it's transient, I think you'll see a lot of companies use this situation as an excuse to clear the decks of what they perceive to be bad hires or underperforming employees that they'd otherwise let limp on in good times.
But it's doubtful how long they can keep that up for. Some months, sure. But not years, and the virus is going to stick around for a while. I think it's just a delay.
It strikes me as a good play, if we were living in times that were normal.
Take 2019 for instance. If that scheme existed then, without any pandemic, it would be a great way to soften the exit and allow folks time to find new jobs.
But the world we're in now, not so much. It's pulling the band-aid off slower, and my take is, waiting for a hail-mary play when someone magically comes up with a solution for this problem.
My interpretation of all of this waves hand around at world leaders is that they genuinely believe science and technology work like magic, and will come up with something, soon.
In Poland you get fuck all. Government kept promising 40% contribution but doesn't say where you're supposed to find the other 60% from. So companies are letting go of people left and right.
Sweden too, but government "only" pays 60% IIRC. Employer pays the rest but there has also been some ease on how much tax an employer has to pay for each employee.
What's it actually like there? It sounds like you're under strict lockdown but everyone seems to be saying the government is doing a terrible job (even though the test positive rate is low and the relative number of cases, even the absolute number of cases, is low). Here you say the economy is still humming along but other people say there's queues outside of Centrelink and down the street and around the corner.
Are shops like Bunnings and Big W still open? Bike shops? Hobby stores? Gift shops? These are considered non essential here in Germany some of which has caused me difficulty and some of which have not (somewhere may be non essential this week, but over a long enough period of time, everywhere is essential; we just moved a fortnight before the lockdown and fortunately I bought the things I needed for a new home just before they were shut down as non-essential).
Restaurants I gather are closed to in house meals same as here. But same as here they're open for takeaway.
Factories and such businesses were closed in Italy, but I don't think they were shut down here.
Cinemas I take it are closed. Prisons in Victoria at least do not accept inperson visitors which causes prisoners severe isolation but is obviously better then getting them all infected. I understand prisoners are still working - if they're isolated and healthy I guess there's no reason to stop them from working.
Most retail shops are closed. A lot of restaurants and cafes are closed. All events cancelled. So there's a lot of casuals / partimers who don't have any work anymore.
Bunnings, BigW, Kmart, all supermarkets are open with social distancing and limiting people in the store. Not sure a bout bike stores. Hobbyco in QVB is still open. A lot of stores closed their retail but are still doing online orders.
Basically Australia uses a combination of blacklist and a whitelist system. Some places where people gather like gyms and pubs are forced to close, and restaurants are forced to takeaway-only. You also have a whitelist on reasons to come outside of your home, which still include work.
My company was good - we spend a week preparing and now almost everyone is working from home, which is probably unusual considering we work in embedded systems. I have several boxes of hardware in my room with me now.
Open and doing roaring business from what I can tell. Took my mountain bike to get serviced and my mechanic said he’s far busier than he anticipated and it’d be over a week before he could even get to my bike.
Just to clarify, the guy below said he lives in Sydney and retail is closed, but in Melbourne the corona cases density seems a bit less than Sydney.
Most of our retail is still open, for example Target, Kmart, most coffee shops are still open doing takeaway and I can still go to JB HiFi, BBC shop, book shop, EB Games etc. So it seems like not a lot has changed regarding my current lifestyle except working from home.
Gyms, Massage, Casinos, Pubs, Clubs etc. that you’d expect to spread the virus really quickly are all closed.
Yep. social gatherings / hospitality industry / gyms etc are banned, and anyone who can work from home is doing so, but you still can leave your house for "essential reasons", e.g. exercise, buying takeaway lunch every day. many retail stores and public transport are still functioning.
I think it's our
- low density
- government actually listening to scientists and reacting quickly and non-ideologically.
Density differences are overblown. No-one is catching coronavirus in the uninhabited deserts or cattle stations hours from the nearest town. They catch it in crowded public transport vehicles and in grocery stores.
The government responding quickly and non-ideologically is the number one reason why Australia is doing good and the rest of the west is doing so badly. Whether it's the ideology of freedom of travel or the ideology of the economy before health, it has hurt other nations whereas Australia's ideology of pragmatism (and our neverending experience with many other crises and disasters) has helped.
low density yes. tho would argue each politician is finger-dancing to the beat of their own belly-gurgles. not quite trump/cuomo levels of disfunction, but trendy-curves aside, messaging here definitely lacks some cohesion.
And the list is just startups, too - they're obviously more vulnerable in many ways to financial shocks than large companies, but large corporate layoffs are going to be where the big numbers are.
What I don't quite understand is why startups who either just received funding or companies who were doing reasonably well decide to do mass layoffs during economic downturns? I mean they provide $reasons but I have a hard time taking them at face value.
- A lot if them are not profitable.
- They don't know how long this will last.
- Many planned on growing into profitability over n months and expected they could raise more money if needed.
- Now, there is no growth for many and contractions.
- Investment money is drying up
- they might not have 2 years at their current burn rate to get to profitable status.
In the end, it can be about survival. Their pre coronavirus burn rates are not sustainable. Of course, for some, it is also a continent way to shed staff who appear to be underperforming, freeze raises, and ask more of their employees.
For many (even unicornish) startups the funding is released in tranches, usually tied to certain performance metrics. With drastically reduced revenue, new customer flow all dried up, and even marketing result graphs simulating nosedives, there aren't that many milestones you could hit.
If [enough] performance milestones are missed, company's next batch of on-paper funding pot may not be released.
Non-essential demand has been down and even those who are essential suffer from a logistical hellscape. Unless you are involved with COVID mitigation directly now is not the time to attempt growth. Even those which service those stuck at home have to suffer from the rest of the economy collapsing. Advertising rates are in the toliet because they can't do much good to bring in sales.
Are they seriously listing down emails and mobile numbers of the people layed off? Is there no privacy concern here or am I missing the bigger picture?
I don't really understand that either. My best guess is potential employers can contact them directly? Still I would put a layer in between, i.e. LinkedIn.
It's worth remembering there are plenty of companies not laying people off, and "normal" will return eventually.
That said, I was watching The Big Short yesterday, and a line that I had noted before haunted me even more: "For every 1% unemployment goes up [in the USA], 40,000 people die".
Stay safe, stay positive.