Virus Throws Millions More Out of Work, and Washington Struggles to Keep Pace
Federal efforts to keep businesses operating and workers employed have so far failed to stop the bleeding as the coronavirus tears through the economy in devastating ways.
When the federal government began rushing trillions of dollars of assistance to Americans crushed by the coronavirus pandemic, the hope was that some of the aid would allow businesses to keep workers on the payroll and cushion employees against job losses.
But so far, a staggering number of Americans — more than 16 million — have lost their jobs amid the outbreak. Businesses continue to fail as retailers, restaurants, nail salons and other companies across the country run out of cash and close up shop as their customers are forced to stay at home.
The Labor Department report pushed to more than 16 million the number of workers who have lost their jobs over the past three weeks, which is more job losses than the most recent recession produced over two years.
There is a growing agreement among many economists that the government’s efforts were too small and came too late in the fast-moving pandemic to prevent businesses from abandoning their workers. Federal agencies, working in a prescribed partnership with Wall Street, have proved ill equipped to move money quickly to the places it is needed most. The response came too late to save many of the businesses that now face bankruptcy.
An analysis by University of Chicago economists of data from Homebase, which supplies scheduling software for tens of thousands of small businesses that employ hourly workers in dining, retail and other sectors, suggests more than 40 percent of those firms have closed since the crisis began.
As the coronavirus shuts businesses across the United States, fresh evidence of the economic devastation came from a government report on Thursday that showed that 6.6 million more workers had lost their jobs.
Small-business aid from an initial $349 billion pot has been slow to arrive for many companies already staring down the possibility of bankruptcy, with bureaucratic and technological hurdles bedeviling the program. The Paycheck Protection Program — which offers companies forgivable loans to continue covering their payroll — began taking applications only on April 3, weeks after many merchants had been ordered to close their doors. Very little of the more than $100 billion committed through it so far has actually made it into borrowers’ hands.
Flooded by requests for help like never before, a federal disaster loan program that was supposed to deliver emergency relief to small businesses in just three days has run low on funding and nearly frozen up entirely. Now, business owners who applied are desperate for cash and answers about what aid, if any, they are going to receive.
The initiative, known as the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, is an expansion of an emergency system run by the Small Business Administration that has for years helped companies after natural disasters like hurricanes, floods and tornadoes. To speed billions of dollars in aid along, the government directly funds the loans, sparing applicants the step of finding a lender willing to work with them.
But in the face of the pandemic, the loan program is drowning in requests. Many applicants have waited weeks for approval, with little to no information about where they stand, and others are being told they’ll get a fraction of what they expected.
The program is supposed to offer loans of up to $2 million, but many recent applicants said the S.B.A. help line had told them that loans would be capped at $15,000 per borrower. That was backed up by a message from the agency that one applicant shared with The New York Times.
The CARES Act, the $2 trillion relief bill signed by President Trump last month, also authorized the S.B.A. to hand out the first $10,000 as a grant that didn’t have to be paid back. Those funds were supposed to be available to applicants within three days of their application, even if they weren’t approved for a loan. That hasn’t happened, according to more than 400 applicants who contacted The Times.
Banks, which are expected to front the money for the program, are still battling bottlenecks at the overwhelmed Small Business Administration and are waiting for technical information they need to close and fund the loans.
Efforts to pass $250 billion in small-business loans stalled in the Senate after Republicans and Democrats clashed over what to include. Senators and advocacy groups have begun to push additional measures to bolster companies through the pandemic. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, wrote on Thursday that “the federal government should cover 80 percent of wages for workers at any U.S. business, up to the national median wage, until this emergency is over.”
Senators and advocacy groups have begun to push additional measures to bolster companies through the pandemic. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, wrote on Thursday that “the federal government should cover 80 percent of wages for workers at any U.S. business, up to the national median wage, until this emergency is over.”
Congress seems unlikely to adopt a similar program, or even something akin to what Mr. Hawley proposed on Thursday. And while Mr. Trump has promised a “boom” in the economy in the weeks to come — foreshadowing a push to lift the restrictions officials have placed on activity — many economists disagree.
Forecasters at Moody’s Analytics warned on Thursday that some 45 million Americans were at risk of losing their jobs amid the pandemic, including three-quarters of the workers in the hospitality and construction industries. They warned it was a “conservative estimate.”
Here’s what else is happening in the U.S.:
New York State reported that the number of patients hospitalized with the virus rose by only 200, the smallest one-day increase since a statewide lockdown. But the daily death toll remained grim: 799, bringing the total to 7,067.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide has surged past 1.5 million, according to data collected by The New York Times and Johns Hopkins University. As of Friday morning, at least 95,000 people had died, and the virus had been detected in at least 177 countries.
Trump forges ahead with broader agenda even as coronavirus upends the country
as the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the country, President Trump’s administration has ousted two key inspectors general, moved to weaken federal gas mileage standards, nominated a young conservative for a powerful appeals court and sent scores of immigrants back across the southern border without a customary hearing.
It’s a whirlwind of activity taking place away from the spotlight that highlights how the twin crises of a viral outbreak and an economic slowdown have not slowed Trump’s aggressive push to advance his broader agenda in the months before he faces voters.
In some cases, Trump is continuing to do what he had been doing, pushing policies that have won him plaudits among his conservative supporters. In others, he is using the broad powers granted to the executive branch amid a national crisis to pursue policy goals he has long sought and in some cases struggled to achieve.
Trump Keeps Talking. Some Republicans Don’t Like What They’re Hearing.
Aides and allies increasingly believe the president’s daily briefings are hurting him more than helping, and are urging him to let his medical experts take center stage.
In his daily briefings on the coronavirus, President Trump has brandished all the familiar tools in his rhetorical arsenal: belittling Democratic governors, demonizing the media, trading in innuendo and bulldozing over the guidance of experts.
It’s the kind of performance the president relishes, but one that has his advisers and Republican allies worried.
As unemployment soars and the death toll skyrockets, and new polls show support for the president’s handling of the crisis sagging, White House allies and Republican lawmakers increasingly believe the briefings are hurting the president more than helping him. Many view the sessions as a kind of original sin from which all of his missteps flow, once he gets through his prepared script and turns to his preferred style of extemporaneous bluster and invective.
Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board chastised the president for his behavior at the briefings. “Covid-19 isn’t shifty Schiff,” it wrote in an editorial on Thursday, using Mr. Trump’s nickname for Representative Adam Schiff. “It’s a once-a-century threat to American life and livelihood.”
With only intermittent attempts to adapt to a moment of crisis, Mr. Trump is effectively wagering that he can win re-election in the midst of a national emergency on a platform of polarization.Three new polls this week show Mr. Biden leading the president, and the Trump campaign’s internal surveys show he has mostly lost the initial bump he received early in the crisis, according to three people briefed on the numbers. Public polls show he badly trails the nation’s governors and his own medical experts in terms of whom Americans trust most for guidance.
The White House coronavirus task force released a breakdown of testing data on Thursday, revealing that older Americans who are tested for the virus are more likely to test positive than other age groups.
Among people who were tested:
11 percent of those under 25 were positive.
17 percent of those between 25 and 45 were positive.
21 percent of those between 45 and 65 were positive.
22 percent of those between 65 and 85 were positive.
24 percent of those over 85 were positive.
One American man did not seem all that excited about wide-scale testing: Trump.
The president expressed reluctance to wait for comprehensive national testing before reopening the country for business and social life again. While he boasted that testing has increased drastically in recent days, he said it would be implausible to expect that the whole country could be screened for the virus as a condition of restoring normal life.
“Do you need it? No,” he said at his daily briefing. “Is it nice? Yes. We’re talking 325 million people. That’s not going to happen, as you can imagine.”
Even though more than 1,000 people are now dying every day in the United States, new infections have slowed in places where stringent measures have been in place for more than two weeks, offering some hope.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain was moved out of intensive care on Thursday, as the country’s coronavirus death toll approached 8,000. The next question is when, and how, to reopen the British economy.
France’s death toll rose past 12,000 on Thursday, but the total number of patients in intensive care fell slightly for the first time since the start of the epidemic.
The Federal Reserve has also created a flurry of new programs to keep the financial system from seizing up, including one effort announced Thursday that seeks to help nearly 19,000 businesses that have not otherwise obtained federal assistance.