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Economic VOICE
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Job Losses Still Too High
Mark Whitehurst, PhD Publisher & Editor Publisher@VoiceSB.com
Kerry Methner, PhD Editor & Publisher Editor@VoiceSB.com
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Harlan Green © 2020 Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen. Harlan Green has been the 16-year Editor-Publisher of PopularEconomics.com, a weekly syndicated financial wire service. He writes a Popular Economics Weekly Blog. He is an economic forecaster and teacher of real estate finance with 30-years experience as a banker and mortgage broker. To reach Harlan call (805)452-7696 or email editor@populareconomics.com
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Columnists: Robert Adams • Robert@EarthKnower.com Harlan Green • editor@populareconomics.com Beverley Jackson • c/o editor@voicesb.com Richard Jarrette • c/o editor@voicesb.com Amanda & Richard Payatt • foodwinetwosome@cox.net Sigrid Toye • Itssigrid@gmail.com Translator: Jeanette Casillas Bookkeeping: Maureen Flanigan Advertising: Advertising@VoiceSB.com Circulation: Central Coast Circulation • (805) 636-6845
California Newspaper Publishers Association
By Harlan Green / Special to VOICE
HE U.S. ECONOMY IS RECOVERING VERY SLOWLY, in part because the number filing for first-time unemployment benefits is still too high (see above graph). Why? Businesses are still shedding workers because the COVID-19 pandemic is not under control in the U.S. Total infections are now surpassing April highs, which means some states will have to slow down their re-openings as well as the rehiring of workers. CDC and NIH experts Drs. Redfield and Fauci testified Tuesday to congress that COVID-19 is surging rather than fading and not under control, as President Trump has asserted in recent speeches. In fact, Dr. Fauci said they won’t even have reliable diagnostic tests that will tell them how patients are infected until this fall. Dr. Fauci said the U.S. is “still in the middle of the first wave” and the imperative is to “get this outbreak under control over the next couple of months,” in his testimony. It is also affecting world-wide growth. Economist Mohamed El-Erian writes in ProjectSyndicate: “The world’s leading international economic institutions – the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, and the World Bank – now warn that it may take at least two years for the global economy to regain what has been lost to COVID-19. If the major economies face additional waves of infections, recovery would take even longer.” According to World Bank forecasts, the global economy will shrink by 5.2 percent this year. That would represent the deepest recession since the Second World War, with the largest fraction of economies experiencing declines in per capita output since 1870, the World Bank says in its June 2020 Global Economic Prospects. This in fact mirrors what happened after the world’s last worst pandemic—the 1918-20 Spanish flu outbreak from which the U.S. economy didn’t recover until 1922. And growth in the developed countries will be worse where the pandemic has been the most severe and where there is heavy reliance on global trade, tourism, commodity exports, and external financing, says the World Bank. Guess which country has the worst death toll and infection rates? It is the U.S., which means U.S. GDP growth is predicted to shrink by five to six percent this year say all three of the international economic institutions El-Erian highlights. In the week ending June 20th, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims was 1,480,000, a decrease of 60,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The Labor Department said the advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 13.4 percent for the week ending June 13th, a decrease of 0.5 percentage point from the previous week’s revised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending June 13th was 19,522,000, a decrease of 767,000 from the previous week’s revised level. And WHO also warned of a new and dangerous phase of the pandemic. Eighty-one nations have seen a growth in new cases over the past two weeks. Only 36 have seen declines. “Many people are understandably fed up with being at home,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, said in a news conference in which he described the new phase of the virus. “Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and their economies. But the virus is still spreading fast. It is still deadly and most people are still susceptible.” We said last week that many employers, including auto and airline sectors, had been hiring back their employees over the past month, hence a surprise jump in employment with the 2.5 million jobs increase in May. Now both consumer sentiment and retail sales are beginning to recover, but only in those states and counties that listen to the experts, which means this recovery will be uneven at best.
July 3, 2020
Hispanic-Serving Publication
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Computer Oriented RE Technology For Information on all Real Estate Sales: 805-962-2147 • JimWitmer@cox.net • Cortsb.com
'11 '12 '13 ‘14 ‘15 ‘16 ‘17 ‘18 ‘19 ‘20
Jan
Feb Mar
Apr
80 114 141 142 142 126 142 101
94 113 146 132 113 118 132
119 170 197 186 202 166 149
146 183 189 141 235 153 164
May June July
Santa Barbara
South County Sales
Aug Sept
Oct
Nov
Dec
135 225 265 207 226 220 189
140 215 209 174 210 195 257
147 217 217 196 207 174 193
156 213 216 179 217 214 224
160 173 181 171 155 187 178
128 218 178 160 149 161 173
126 190 138 137 124 158 172
170 275 167 170 150 159 170
121 172 179 234 128 168 190 179 210 144 125 141 101 84
211 208
165 259
225 184 209 173
171 157
145 152
163 212
Santa Barbara Mortgage Interest Rates
Contact your local loan agent or mortgage broker for current rates: DRAPER & KRAMER MORTGAGE CORP.
Please call for current rates: Russell Story, 805-895-8831 PARAGON MORTGAGE GROUP
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Please call for current rates: Teri Gauthier, 805-565-4571 • Coastal Housing Partnership Member Rates are supplied by participating institutions prior to publishing deadline and are deemed reliable. They do not constitute a commitment to lend and are not guaranteed. For more information and additional loan types and rates, consumers should contact the lender of their choice. CASA Santa Barbara cannot guarantee the accuracy and availability of quoted rates. All quotes are based on total points including loan. Rates are effective as of 7/2/2020. ** Annual percentage rate subject to change after loan closing.