The Gloomy Forecast of a Job Market Resurgence

Most people have moved on from the blame-game associated with Covid-19, the global pandemic that's sweeping vigorously through over 130 nations. Barring a very small minority of people who use the occasion to blame Donald Trump for not being a dictator, or to blame China for not handling it sooner, the vast majority of people are simply concerned about keeping their job, with thousands more having to worry about filing for unemployment every day. According to some economists, this might get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

A new report has shown that, during the month of March, the United States lost 701,000 jobs. Make no mistake about it: These numbers aren't just layoffs that are temporary due to Covid-19 and its devastating effects. These are jobs that are lost permanently. Unlike many of the over 10 million unemployed who just need a short-term fix to get back to a job that's still waiting, nearly a million jobs just vanished during March due to businesses actually going bankrupt and closing for good.

While there are many economists saying it, one doesn't need to hear it from an economist to know itâ's true: This is going to be much harder to bounce back from than temporary layoffs. According to sources like Yahoo! News, the Wall Street Journal, and other sources that cover the economy in great detail, this is just a taste of what's to come, and the numbers in April might nearly double March before it's all said and done. The only thing that could even come close to preventing this is the $2.2 trillion in stimulus spending, yet that money has yet to be delivered, by and large.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the jobs report was "even worse than it looked," after analyzing the jobs report that was released on Friday, April 3. One issue the Journal sites is that because most people and media sources are only focused on the number of jobs that vanished, what they missed were the numbers of businesses currently suffering, teetering on the edge and about to fall off any day now. Attention is paid to the millions of new enrollees in the nation's unemployment program, and rightfully, so, though that steals attention away from a larger problem looming, in that the problem is expanding exponentially and shows no signs of slowing down.

Without any sort of coverage of this sort of failing of the job market, there's no pressure put on government to intervene. Needless to say, government has its hands full with current programs happening, so they're not out there looking for coming problems to juggle. So it's important attention is placed on these looming issues from media sources. And to date, media has been very polarizing during Covid-19 on a national level, either directing blame at Trump and doing everything opposite of what he advises, or standing fully in his camp and downplaying the problem.

Why the Recession Might Last Longer Than Expected

The vast majority of Americans, save a very small minority, are concerned with the job market and the economy overall. What's so worrying to a lot of experts is that jobs may be a lot slower to come back than people realize. A good way to explain it is to look at American industry as a word. Say "Economy." Each letter represents a different aspect, like farming, production, manufacturing, shipping, selling, etc. Remove the "c" and the "m" from this word, leaving you with "Eonoy," and you don't have the proper pieces there to connect.

If, for instance, manufacturing doesn't recover, then it doesn't matter that much that truck drivers are available for shipping. They don't get paid just to drive around with empty trucks. So that's at least two industries collapsed because one of them fell short. And it actually spreads out farther than that, affecting all sorts of other industries.

The economy, according to experts, is a living, breathing thing, and when strong it benefits from a symbiotic relationship with other industries feeding on one another. Economists fear that a collapse in one crucial industry will end up having the domino effect on many other industries, and it's going to end up taking a whole lot longer to right the ship.

Time will tell how bad it all gets. For right now, however, it's expected to keep getting worse for the job market.