"Another 1.3 million people applied for new jobless benefits last week as the pandemic’s toll on the economy continued" by Eli Rosenberg, Washington Post | July 9, 2020
Another 1.3 million people filed for unemployment for the first time last week, a slight decrease from the week before, as novel coronavirus cases and closures surged around the country, according to data released Thursday by the Department of Labor.
The numbers of new unemployment filings have remained above a million each week since the pandemic began in mid-March. That number has averaged about 1.4 million the past four weeks.
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In addition, states reported that another 1 million claims were made under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which grants jobless benefits for gig workers, self-employed workers and contractors, the agency reported.
When combined, the two numbers for initial unemployment claims have ticked up the past three weeks, from 2.24 million in mid-June to 2.44 million last week.
The numbers for the first few days of July come as rising cases of coronavirus infections have hit states and counties nationwide, touching off a new round of closures and restrictions and sending some workers back to the unemployment insurance queue for the second time in just a few short months.
That is not only what the Rockefeller documents say while happen, that is literally torture.
“The bad news is that initial claims are still historically very high and they suggest that damage is continuing to accumulate in the economy,” Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork, said in an interview.
“All these factors look more like an economy that is riding into a recession than out of one,” Ozimek said. “At this stage in the game, when we’re this far from initial shock, it becomes less likely that new layoffs are the types of jobs that snap back.”
Try Grand Depre$$ion.
The numbers of people continuously receiving benefits at the end of June has also trended gradually downward. The last week of June saw 18.1 million people on unemployment insurance, down from 19.3 million people the week before that, as rehirings have slightly outpaced new layoffs week by week, but as hopes fade for a quick rebound from the pandemic — the United States reported more than 60,000 new cases Wednesday, a new high — signs of longer-term economic damage are emerging.
Levi Strauss & Co. said this week that it planned to cut about 15 percent of its non-retail and non-manufacturing positions, or about 700 jobs, this year. United Airlines warned it may need to furlough nearly 40 percent of its workforce this year, about 36,000 employees. Industrial and aerospace manufacturer Barnes Group said it would lay off 400 workers; BAE Systems, a defense and aerospace company, said it planned to lay off 300 employees.
What a JOLT, huh?
There were also more setbacks for Boeing (awwww), and most of Wall Street wilted Thursday on worries that the economy’s recent improvements may be set to fade as coronavirus cases keep climbing as investors are downgrading their expectations for the economy.
There are many workers like Samantha Hartman, 29, whose temporary layoff — she was furloughed in March from Rosen Hotels & Resorts, the hospitality company she works for in Orlando — became permanent this week.
Hartman said her supervisor called her this week to tell her the company had tried to come up with a way to keep employees but found its hands tied with almost no business coming in.
“Everything is up in the air,” Hartman said. “I fully expect not to find another job in this industry.”
Why not apply to Disney World?
Michael Callahan snapped a photo of Sarah Breland near the Walt Disney World theme park entrance Thursday (Octavio Jones/Getty Images/Getty Images).
They are reopening, you know.
The company, which received a Paycheck Protection Program small business loan of more than $6 million, according to the Orlando Sentinel, announced Wednesday it would lay off a “substantial” amount of its workforce by July 31.
Hartman, who has a heart condition, said the company is letting her keep her health care through August. She moved to Orlando two years ago for the job. She says she’ll probably move back with her family in California when her lease is up next year.
She said Florida’s challenges — including large delays in unemployment insurance processing, mishandling of the coronavirus response, a governor she doesn’t trust — make her less likely to stay in Florida. “If I’m going to struggle financially, I’d rather do that back home where I have a support system,” Hartman said.....
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I hope her mortgage is paid up:
"Wells Fargo readying thousands of job cuts to start in 2020" by Hannah Levitt Bloomberg, July 10, 2020
Wells Fargo & Co. is preparing to cut thousands of jobs starting later this year, potentially setting a bleak precedent for an industry that’s been resisting mass layoffs as the coronavirus pandemic worsens.
Pressure to dramatically reduce costs is coming to a head inside the bank, prompting executives to draft plans that may ultimately eliminate tens of thousands of positions, people with knowledge of the confidential talks said, asking not to be named. Some analysts predict the lender may post its first quarterly loss in more than a decade next week.
Though the strains at Wells Fargo are more acute than at rivals, any cuts would reverberate across an industry facing mounting loan losses.
Lenders including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. plan to maintain their payouts this quarter, but as the Fed keeps an eye on mounting US infections, it has said it could eventually restrict how much banks pay out using a formula based on earnings. If Wells Fargo offsets the pain for its shareholders by cutting compensation expenses, that could set a precedent for others in the industry.
“Not every financial institution came into this tumultuous time period on really sound footing, and those problems haven’t gone away because of the pandemic,” said Andy Challenger, senior vice president at staffing adviser Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “We very well may see a resumption of normal cutting as the pressure builds up within these organizations.”
The $camdemic has only made things worse, but they were going to do that anyway!
The firm’s expenses have surged in recent years on legal costs, remediation and fines related to a series of scandals that began with the 2016 revelation that employees opened unauthorized customer accounts to meet sales goals. Chief executive Charlie Scharf already has made little secret of his concern about costs, calling them “way too high” during a presentation in May. Scharf was known as a cost-cutter when the board enlisted him in October, and he’s warned there will be much work to be done once he finishes a review aimed at reviving profitability.....
He won't be able to fix the problems until next year, and the scandals leave one $tumpfed.
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Now for the good new$:
"When the Encore Boston Harbor casino reopens Sunday after a months-long shutdown, patrons will be greeted by plexiglass sneeze guards secured to card tables with gold-colored fasteners, fancy coasters to hold face masks while people are eating, and an unlimited supply of sanitizer. Encore will be one of the largest indoor places open to the public to restart as the state seeks to safely emerge from its COVID-19 lockdown....."
It will be a roll of the dice to go in there.
Relay Therapeutics is looking to raise $250m in its IPO next week
The Cambridge biotech is working to develop treatments for solid tumors.
Cambridge biotech startup will get $150m in deal with Sanofi
Kymera's 'protein degrader' could treat immune-inflammatory diseases, and doesn't the CEO have such a nice smile?
"Big pharma companies earmark $1b to develop antibiotics for drug-resistant bacteria" by Jade Wilson Bloomberg, July 9, 2020
Some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies are launching a $1 billion fund aimed at developing new antibiotics, a field many of them had abandoned in recent years.
We are heading into a pharmacological and technological dystopia if this is allowed to stand.
Supported by drug giants including Pfizer Inc., Merck & Co., Eli Lilly & Co., and GlaxoSmithKline PLC, the fund will invest in small companies developing antibacterial treatments, according to a statement. Among its goals is bringing two to four new antibiotics to patients by 2030.
The uncontrolled rise of drug-resistant microbes is a public health crisis that has the potential to dwarf COVID-19 in deaths and economic costs, the companies said. Antimicrobial resistance causes some 700,000 annual deaths worldwide and could claim as many as 10 million lives yearly by 2050 if new treatments aren’t available, according to the World Health Organization.
I've seen this damn movie before!
What is with them anyway?
Never-ending fear from those f**kers towards their evil endgame.
Antibiotic resistance is a “slow tsunami that threatens to undo a century of medical progress,” according to the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said he welcomed the private sector’s engagement in developing urgently needed therapies.
That $ick f**king $hill and his crocodile tears!
These people are PURE EVIL!
Pharma companies had retreated from the antibiotic sector in recent years, even as the threat of drug-resistant microbes grew. The field has been hampered by low revenue, in part because novel antibiotics are used sparingly to preserve their effectiveness. The industry has instead focused on more profitable fields, such as treatments for heart disease and cancer.
Meaning you wouldn't really want to cure those last two. Think statin $candal, the foi$ting of opioids on us, now forgotten, and the lowering of BP guidelines. Would it be beyond them to give you diseases with their needles and tests? It's all about constant revenue streams, and now they see a pile of money as well as an excuse to release another bioweapon against unsuspecting populations!
I'm sure this is part of the second wave as well.
The fund "obviously is not the answer to antimicrobial resistance," Phil Thomson, Glaxo's president of global affairs, said in an interview. "This should be characterized as a step forward, a step to build on."
The British company hopes it will spur other initiatives that provide incentives to invest in antibiotics, he said. More countries need to adopt policies like the United Kingdom‘s plan, announced last year, to test the world’s first “subscription-style” payment model, he said.
The fund is expected to become operational during the fourth quarter of 2020. The effort also has support from the European Investment Bank and Wellcome Trust, a UK health research foundation.
The Wellcome Tru$t has connections to gue$$ WHO, and I will now GHIT out of here.
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