America’s job bloodshed continues

SAN FRANCISCO - In the last week, another 2.1 million Americans jobs filed for unemployment  benefits. That far outpaces the number of people returning to work as the economy slowly reopens under the threat of more virus outbreaks.

A hard look at the numbers and what a renowned labor expert says is the way back to prosperity. For that we contacted renowned expert, labor lawyer and former Employment Development Department Director Michael Bernick who says even as the economy starts to re-open, we are now in uncharted unemployment territory.

Almost 41 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits in the last 10 weeks. That's 26% of all U.S. workers.

California has has 4.5 million claimants since mid-March plus another 600,000 independent workers, not eligible for state benefits, who've applied for Federal Pandemic Relief. That's total of 5.1 million jobless Californians, also 26%.

"Those are very comparable to the Depression levels and are far, far above anything we've seen in the post World War Two period," said Mr. Bernick.

We're beginning to see a lot more job losses in professional and business services, such as office workers, lawyers, accountants, insurers, real estate 

Services as well as Education and Health Services. "Initially, in the first weeks of the pandemic, they were largely unaffected but we've seen a big growth in this sector of job losses just in the past couple weeks," said Bernick.

Now, the somewhat layoff-immune non-profit sector is getting hit, even those with big endowments.

"Just in the past couple days, the California Academy of Sciences, a venerable institution here in the Bay Area, 75% of their workers either laid off or furloughed or reduced pay. The Presidio Trust, a venerable operation laying off people," said Bernick.

The nation has lost more than a million government jobs, 110,000 of them in California. Without substantial Federal relief, that leaves 19 million more public workers worrying and the overall unemployment rate unpredictable.

"So, even that sector, largely immune at the start, starting to see major layoffs and furloughs," said Bernick.

Most striking: the apparent public numbness to unprecedented job losses and economic devastation, largely because the majority of workers still have jobs for now.

Bernick says most folks believe this, "That the federal government is going to continue to put more and more money in...there will be unlimited stimulus efforts and that's certainly not going to be the case."

Bernick's solutions: open the economy as quickly and safely as possible.

Maintain incentives to keep people on payrolls and start numerous 
infrastructure projects to provide transitional jobs. Do all of this quickly, in a couple weeks, not months.