A Tale of Two Recoveries

 The recovery has been different depending on who you are. The wealthy have made out handsomely, while the poorer of society have not been treated well. People who are in a position during to purchase stocks and securities have made a lot of money since March, but the poorer amongst the population do not have  the means to own stocks. When you live paycheck to paycheck, you can not really put money into investments.

The stock market rose 4.3 Trillion in November, and the people that were hit hardest by the recession and the pandemic hardly saw any of it. Many people are still struggling, and hopefully congress will pass some sort stimulus bill to help people weather the storm until a vaccine is widely distributed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/04/stock-market-stimulus-unemployment-figures/

A Blow to Economic Recovery

Six months after the coronavirus pandemic tore a hole in the U.S. economy, the once-promising recovery is stalling, leaving millions out of work, and threatening to push millions more. We have seen throughout this pandemic, that many places are out of business and many people have been laid off from companies due to the decrease in productivity by those companies. At first, it was supposed to be temporary, but now it seems as if this could go on longer than expected and this could cause protests and outbreak from people who got laid off. Many companies went online allowing people to be able to still work but still, even those companies had to lay off many people in order to maintain their business and not let it die down. Economists said that the economic report underscored the need for more federal help. This means many people are wanting to get more federal aid or more stimulus checks in order to maintain their lives. The unemployment rate fell to 7.9 percent, down from a record high of nearly 15 percent in April which means there was some improvement. But along this good news carried a caveat that nearly 700,000 people left the labor force, meaning they no longer counted as unemployed. Overall, unemployment is even worse for women than men if looked across demographics. This means single women who tend to take care of their children are in a much worse condition and should be given aid through either federal aid or be considered for jobs as much as men. Do you guys believe this is unfair to each person? Do you guys believe that people should get more federal aid or should the companies get more aid so they could start hiring more employees decreasing unemployment rate as well? Cited: Casselman, B., & Friedman, G. (2020, October 02). Job Gains Are Waning, a Blow to Economic Recovery. Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/business/economy/september-jobs-report.html

China Helps Fund COVID Vaccine

 A Chinese Biotech company named Sinovac has received over 500 million dollars in funding efforts so that they will be able to double their production numbers on the vaccine. The company that invested such a large amount was another Chinese company by the name of Sino Biopharmaceutical Limited. With this amount of money, Sinovac will be able to produce 600 million vaccine doses a year. Numbers this large will quickly show a positive impact around the world, especially with a 95% efficiency rating. Hopefully soon there is a break in all the madness and things can return back to where they were before the pandemic, socially at least anyways.

Sinovac secures $515 million funding to boost COVID-19 vaccine production | Reuters

Further Slowdown in Job Creation Sets Off Economic Alarms

A few months after the economic opening of the country and the quick decline of the unemployment rate, the rate of hiring has slowed significantly.The Labor Department reported Friday that employers added 245,000 jobs in November, fewer than half the number created in October. The pace of hiring has now diminished for five straight months.While many of those knocked out of a job early in the pandemic have been rehired, there are roughly 10 million fewer jobs than there were in February. 

One of the longer-lasting wounds is likely to be a large pool of people, many still of prime working age, who drop out of the labor force, remaining sidelined even when opportunities return. The share of those 16 and older who are in a job and actively looking for one fell by 61.5 percent in November and continues to remain far below levels seen before the pandemic. This drop is most seen in women, who are heavily significant in the service industry that hit hardest during the pandemic have left the labor market to take on family responsibilities. It is not just women are being hit the hardest with this stall in employment. Unemployment among Blacks and Hispanics are significantly higher than it is for whites. 

There is some positives in the labor market. The biggest gains have been in warehousing and moving goods and in health care jobs while jobs in hospitality, travel and leisure continue to struggle. But job creation is slowing with millions of Americans still unemployed so if job creation doesn’t pick up, it will take more than three years to get back to where the labor market was before the pandemic hit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/business/economy/november-jobs-report.html

Brian Deese will Lead National Economic Council

Brian Deese, former advisor for the Obama administration, was chosen late this past week by President Biden to lead the National Economic Council. Deese has a background in climate change and environmental policy. He was appointed by President Obama in 2015 as the Senior Advisor on Climate Change and Energy. He has also spent his time since then as the "sustainability director of asset management" at BlackRock, a leading investment management firm. 

This nomination signals a focus towards climate change amid a pandemic and recovering economy. While environmental policy certainly needs to be a focus for the Biden administration, does this nomination surprise you at all given the current uncertainty of the market? With Trump repealing so many environmental policies that Obama (and Reese) had helped pass, do you think Reese will prioritize environmental policy over other things? How do you think this will impact his opinion on major corporations and environmentally related economic policies like cap-and-trade?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/business/brian-deese-national-economic-council.html