Bad signs all around for the health of Americans, and our economy

I wanted to update a couple of economic stats from the last few days. And it shows that the damage to the economy from both unemployment and COVID-19 isn't going to go away any time soon. Not just in America, but also in Wisconsin.

Not only is this the 16th straight week with more than 1.3 million new claims, Thursday's report on unemployment claims also showed an all-time high in continuing claims, with nearly 33 million receiving some kind of assistance between the 3 main unemployment categories.

You'll notice that the 3rd week of June (the last week reported for totals of all 3 of these programs) has a new high of nearly 14.4 million people getting help through the PUA program for contractors and other gig workers, along with an uptick in the extended claims past 850,000. And that fuller picture is one that lots of our financial media conveniently ignores when they do their weekly stories with unemployment claims.

Wisconsin was responsible for some of that uptick in extended claims, as that 3rd week in June was the first week that Wisconsinites were eligible for the program, which gives an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits beyond the typical 26-week limit. And the DOL reported that more than 19,000 Wisconsinites signed on to those extended benefits in the first week they were available (even though it may involve claims going back to April 4), indicating that many have yet to get their jobs back after a long time off.

The best way to get those unemployment claims down and the economy reopened would involve getting COVID-19 under control, which would allow more businesses to operate safely and increase consumers' confidence in spending at more establishments. But that's not happening either.

Not in America as a whole, where we are now surpassing 70,000 cases a day. And not in Wisconsin, where we had a record week for new infections, and the highest rate of positive tests in 2 months.

It was enough to cause Republicans to gag at their maskless convention in GB this weekend.

This is @RepGrothman *today* at the Wisconsin Republican convention (which was held in-person) pic.twitter.com/MnsVlJryLE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 12, 2020

And in addition to the persistently high unemployment claims and the resurgence of COVID, there are these alarming signals from the housing side of the equation.

In June, nearly 1,500 evictions were filed in Milwaukee County --26% higher than June 2019. https://t.co/wHF0GERP6I

— FOX6 News (@fox6now) July 10, 2020

32% of U.S. households missed July housing payments | “That's the fourth month in a row that a "historically high" number of households were unable to pay their housing bill on time and in full, up from 30% in June and 31% in May.” Evictions start soon. https://t.co/QGSvJi1HYd

— MPW News (@MPWNews) July 8, 2020

If people aren't paying their housing bills, and bars, restuarants and stores aren't getting traffic, how much longer is it going to be until there is a rash of vacancies and oversupply in housing?

Bad signs all around, and it's only going to get worse if this country follows the GOP's "strategy" of ignoring these bad indicators, pretending we are on the verge of returning to anything resembling normalcy, and not doing something to stabilize the re-deteriorating situation.