Over 10 Million US Jobless Claims over Two Weeks

Another 6.6 million jobless claims were added in todays report of US unemployment.

Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, says this is an underestimate because the systems are overloaded. Worse is still to come. There is a study from Drexel, that unemployment increases your risk of death but recessions are good for your health.

Many studies of individuals have shown that employees who lose their jobs have a higher mortality rate, more comprehensive studies have shown, unexpectedly, that population mortality actually declines as unemployment rates increase.

The findings are that job loss is associated with a 73 percent increase in the probability of death – the equivalent of adding 10 years to a person’s age.

However, this increased risk affects only the minority of people who are unemployed and is outweighed by health-promoting effects of an economic slowdown that affect the entire population, such as a drop in traffic fatalities and reduced atmospheric pollution. The researchers found that each percentage-point increase in the individual’s state unemployment rate reduces the hazard of death by approximately 9 percent, which is about the equivalent of making a person one year younger.

American Journal of Epidemiology – Individual Joblessness, Contextual Unemployment, and Mortality Risk, José A. Tapia Granados*, James S. House, Edward L. Ionides, Sarah Burgard, and
Robert S. Schoeni (Drexel University 2014).

The exceptional coronavirus situation has seen a massive improvement in air quality. There is less air pollution because 2 billion people are mostly not driving. This also has a massive reduction in traffic accidents and deaths.