The labor force hit 164.6M in February. 16.8/164.6 is close to a round number.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/09/coronavirus-unemployment-claims-numbers-176794Economic forecasts are becoming routine that predict unemployment will exceed its historic 25 percent peak during the Great Depression, and the number of jobs lost in a mere three weeks now exceeds the 15 million that it took 18 months for the Great Recession to bulldoze from 2007 to 2009.
I suppose one can only hope that they will bounce back a lot faster than they did in either of those two cases. I think the best case scenario is that people who are working from home have a lot of stored up savings that they will then spend in a torrent once they're allowed to do so. Hopefully the pent up demand will cause a huge amount of consumer spending. This is not based on reality or analysis--purely my speculation.
The basic problem is that the economy for the past ten years has been based on share buybacks, rather than R&D, expansion or production. Basically, the entire economy has been frozen in time in 2007 but has increased in expense by 300%. Yeah, if you were selling donuts no problem in January you'll be selling donuts no problem in July but all the financial hijinks between your government and your money have deteriorated. They were fragile to begin with. And this has been a real shock to all things fragile. So the unemployment, in theory, should be fine. In practice, the places where the jobs are are in a whole 'nuther category of stress.
Clearly we should have had a recession two years ago, but Trump decided to pour gasoline on the fire rather than water (tax cuts, firing the Fed chief, threatening the next one, etc) to keep the party going until, I guess, sometime after Nov 2020. My only point was that for professionals who can and are working from home, money just isn't being spent at the rate they would normally spend it, and there should be, therefore, a glut of cash for many people when all's said and done. Hopefully that will make Jane and John Doe go out and buy the crap that they put off buying for half a year, which could light the demand spark. Could be wishful thinking, but I totally agree with you that shit should and must hit the fan, financially speaking.
I’ve been thinking the same thing, but as someone in the tourism industry this is also wishful thinking. Travel will be cheap at least in some parts of Canada so I’m hoping all the people who continued to work but had to be cooped up at home will take advantage of that.