This Week In The Economy: More Nationwide Lockdowns In Europe, US Infection Rate Soaring, Bank of England Ramps Up QE, Mixed Jobs Data
By: Brai Odion-Esene
Tags: Monetary Policy, Macroeconomics, Covid 19, Us Economy, Coronavirus Update

This Week In The Economy: More Nationwide Lockdowns In Europe, US Infection Rate Soaring, Bank of England Ramps Up QE, Mixed Jobs Data

Welcome to a regular snapshot-review of U.S. and international economic news that aims to 1) provide a window into the challenges and decisions facing businesses today, 2) determine the direction of economic policy — such as the speed at which central banks decide to raise interest rates, and 3) assess what the impact will be for consumers.

Editor’s note: A lot has been written about the tupsy-turvy U.S. presidential elections so we will stay away from that here. For updates see — https://www.bing.com/search?q=election+2020+update&cvid=6a97d8772b0c485483545d107ee482ec&pglt=43&FORM=ANNTA1&PC=DCTS

More Lockdowns In Europe, Over 100K Infections In The U.S.

In what could be a sign of what’s to come as cold weather takes hold in Europe and much of North America, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases around the world has continued to soar, with a corresponding increase in the number of deaths — 48,813,769 confirmed cases, with 15,309,370 active cases and 1,235,479 fatalities.

The pace of the outbreak in the United States continues to accelerate — at the time of writing there were 9,699,422 confirmed cases, 3,788,903 active and 238,516 deaths.

This comes as daily coronavirus cases in the United States continue surge to levels not seen since the summer, with states like North Dakota setting records for COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations.

So far this week (from November 1–5), there have been 453,189 new COVID-19 cases in the United States, compared to 357,378 during the same five-day period last week. On Thursday alone, the U.S. reported 113,496 new infections — compared to 86,898 new cases on the same day last week.

India still ranks second, and the number of confirmed cases has risen to 8,412,528. Of that number, 522,721 are active and there have been 125,044 fatalities.

Brazil remains third with 5,614,258 cases at time of writing — 388,135 active and 161,779 deaths. Russia has 1,733,440 confirmed cases, 407,429 active and 29,887 deaths.

Having surged up the list last week, France remains in fifth with 1,601,367 cases — 1,438,052 of that number are active, and there have been 39,037 fatalities. Europe’s second largest economy remains under national lockdown until December 1.

Spain is in sixth place with 1,306,316 confirmed cases, of that 1,267,830 are active cases, and 38,486 deaths. The country is under a state of emergency until May 9, 2021.

Argentina remains in seventh place with 1,217,028 cases — 154,138 active, 32,766 fatalities.

The United Kingdom continues to move up the list, and is now in eighth place with 1,123,197 cases — 1,075,077 active and 48,120 fatalities. Starting this week, the entire country is back under lockdown until December 2, and the UK Chancellor announced additional government support for impacted businesses and individuals to cushion the blow.

This includes extending the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to cover the wages of furloughed workers, support to the self-employed, cash grants of up to £3,000 per month for businesses which are closed, £1.6 billion for English councils to support their local economy and local healthcare response.

The Bank of England also announced additional measures to lower borrowing costs, expanding its asset purchase program by £150 billion (to take the total stock of government bond purchases to £875 billion), in an effort to support economic activity amid the re-imposition of COVID restrictions. The additional bond purchases are expected to begin in January and continue until the end of 2021.

Colombia remains eighth with 1,117,977 confirmed cases, of which 74,602 are active and 32,209 fatalities.

Mexico rounds out the top ten with 949,197 cases — 153,588 active and 93,772 deaths.

Rising infection rates have also been in Italy. Italy’s prime minister this week announced strict estrictions for Lombardy, Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta in the north of the country, and for Calabria in the south. It will last at least two weeks.

Some Improvement In U.S. Employment Situation, But Still Millions Without Work

The U.S. economy added 638,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate declined to 6.9%, but a peak under the hood shows we still have a long way to go before recouping all the losses from the pandemic-induced crisis.

The number of unemployed persons is at 11.1 million, compared to 5.8 million in February. In October, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 1.2 million to 3.6 million, accounting for 32.5 percent of the total unemployed.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons increased by 383,000 to 6.7 million in October, following declines totaling 4.6 million over the prior 5 months. About 3.6 million persons not in the labor force in October were prevented from looking for work due to the pandemic. This is down from 4.5 million in September.

The all-important private services sector added 783,000 jobs in October, Manufacturing employment rose by 38,000 in October but is 621,000 lower than in February.

The U.S. Labor Department reported that last week there were 751,000 new applications for state unemployment insurance, a decrease of 7,000 from the previous week’s revised level. For the week ending October 24, there were 7,285,000 Americans continuing to receive unemployment assistance, a decrease of 538,000 from the previous week’s revised level.

In terms of pandemic-related government support, states reported 362,883 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance last week, an increase of over 3,000 from the prior week.

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending October 17 was 21,508,662. There were 1,444,923 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2019.

During the week ending Oct 17, 9,332,610 individuals claimed Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits and 3,961,060 individuals claimed Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits.