We learned from the Department of Labor this morning that there are still 20 million workers on the unemployment dole, while household spending on goods in October hit an all-time off-the-charts high, rising 8.5% in real terms from a year ago.
But that’s just another measure of the sweeping anomalies that have resulted from an economy simultaneously battered by the Covid-Lockdowns and turbocharged with $3.3 trillion of Everything Bailouts. Parts and pieces are flying every which way—with the only certainty being that it’s not sustainable much longer.
For instance, come January 1 upwards of 14 million of these UI recipients will loose their emergency pandemic benefits (green, blue and yellow portions of the bars). And that is in addition to the $600 per week Federal topper benefit which expired in August, as well as the Trump ordered $300 topper which has now exhausted the $45 billion of Disaster Relief funds that were illegally transferred to these payments as part of Trump’s get out the vote campaign.