unemployment claims

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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Initial claims for unemployment insurance across the U.S. were 180,000 for the week ending April 23, 2022, on a seasonally adjusted basis. This was down by 5,000 (2.7%) from the revised figure for the prior week. The number for the previous week was revised upward by 0.5%, from 184,000 to 185,000. The four-week moving average for initial claims was 179,750, up by 2,250 (1.3%) from the revised figure for the prior week (revised from 177,250 to 177,500).

Initial claims for unemployment insurance in the week ending April 23, 2022, fell by 2.7% from the prior week.

Continuing claims dropped slightly and are at their lowest level since Feb. 7, 1970.

The new claims figure equaled the consensus estimate.

https://www.investopedia.com/jobless-claims-fall-in-week-end…

Lowest continuing claims since 1970, and the population of the US is now 50% greater than in 1970.

People are bouncing off the walls about the drop in GDP. The drop is primarily blamed on lack of exports.

Is the lack of exports due to US companies not being able to find enough qualified workers?

How many people who were within a few yeas of retirement in 2020, simply retired, rather than deal with the work obstructions of the plague, exacerbating the worker shortage?

Increased immigration could relieve the worker shortage, but that would not be acceptable to a large portion of the population.

I have floated before, the possibility of “reforming” Social Security and Medicare to force able bodied retirees back into the workforce, dressed up with blather about the “dignity of work” and admiring stories about people in their 70s and 80s who still work full time. Might carve that into my desktop, along with the “General Rants” of 17 years ago.

Steve

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<I have floated before, the possibility of “reforming” Social Security and Medicare to force able bodied retirees back into the workforce, dressed up with blather about the “dignity of work” and admiring stories about people in their 70s and 80s who still work full time…>

If the IRS changed the law to exclude earned income from the calculation of taxing Social Security, more seniors might go back to work.

https://smartasset.com/retirement/is-social-security-income-…

**According to the IRS, the quick way to see if you will pay taxes on your Social Security income is to take one half of your Social Security benefits and add that amount to all your other income, including tax-exempt interest. This number is known as your combined income (combined income = adjusted gross income (AGI) + nontaxable interest + half of your Social Security benefits).**

**If your combined income is above a certain limit (the IRS calls this limit the base amount), you will need to pay at least some tax.**

**The limit is $25,000 if you are a single filer, head of household or qualifying widow or widower with a dependent child. The limit for joint filers is $32,000.**

There’s no point going back to work if most of the income will be lost as taxation of Social Security.

Another improvement would be to continue the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for seniors over age 65 indefinitely. This was instated in 2021 and was a great improvement since it was very unfair to low-income working seniors to arbitrarily end the EITC at age 64.

One of my TaxAide clients this year was a 92-year old woman who was an assistant manager at Goodwill. Her W-2 showed $18,000 in earnings. Her Social Security was not taxed and she also got an EITC.

These two changes would encourage many seniors to take part-time or low-paid full-time jobs.

Wendy

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These two changes would encourage many seniors to take part-time or low-paid full-time jobs.

“encouraging”? Shinyland doesn’t roll that way. I’m thinking of tactics like Michigan tried to use to force Medicaid recipients to take lousy jobs, withholding of benefits.

The trust fund that backs Medicare Part A will be exhausted in 2026. After that, there will be an unfunded annual deficit of $58B in 27. rising to nearly $100B by 2030. The way to make sure all the hospital corporations are paid would be to cover the shortfall with a premium charged to SS recipients. There are currently some 56M elderly drawing SS, so the premium by 2030 would be less than $2/yr. Not a large enough bite to starve people back into the workforce.

Medicare: Insolvency Projections
Updated October 25, 2021

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/RS20946.pdf

The SS trust fund is projected to be exhausted in 2033, after which only 76% of scheduled benefits would be able to be paid. That would starve quite a few people back into the workforce. Problem is, that is still 11 years out. The additional bodies are wanted now. And the cut would also impact people who are too decrepit to work. What would be needed would be a system that would load all the shortfalls on only the people who are able bodied, because those are the ones wanted in the labor force.

Covid took one year off the financial life of the Social Security retirement fund

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/09/03/social-se…

I would expect a lot of posturing and bloviating about “securing the safety net for the truly needy” to justify Plan Steve. “truly needy” being defined as people who can’t work. People who are able bodied, in spite of their age, would be deemed not “needy”, because they can work for the money they need.

So Plan Steve would take a page from the Michigan “L&Ses” make Medicare for the able bodied conditional on working, and end the SS old age pension as we know it, replacing it with an expanded disability program to pay full, scheduled, benefits to those too feeble to work.

As a rough estimate of the number of “able bodied” SS recipients we would need to consider age as I can’t find any data on how many able bodied retirees there are.

62-69 18.870M

70-84 30.707M

85 & over 5.772M

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/byage.html

So, that is 18.87M out of, based on these numbers, 55.349M, or 34%, that the majority are needed to boot off Social Security as “able bodied” to fill the labor pool, and make up that 24% funding shortfall to pay full benefits to the feeble.

fwiw, 24% of the 55.349M on SS would be 13.284M people.

How many “jobs” are going begging right now?

Total Unfilled Job Vacancies for the United States

Q4 2021: 11,154,666.66667

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LMJVTTUVUSQ647S

So Plan Steve balances SS’ books, fills the job openings that are going begging, with an extra 2M people on the street, so the “JCs” can take back those recent pay increases they have granted.
/Simon Legree mode

Steve

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force able bodied retirees back into the workforce

It is really hard to find a decent-paying job after age 70, especially if you have not worked for a few years.

If they eliminate social security, a lot of people will just die.

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It is really hard to find a decent-paying job after age 70,

The Michigan legislators who sponsored the Medicaid work requirement openly said the purpose of the legislation was to force people to take the lousy, minimum wage, “jobs” that the "JCs were crying no-one wanted to take, and this was before the plague. The shortage of people so desperate they will take any lousy job and put up with an infinite amount of abuse from the “JC” seems to be even worse now. So the shiny solution is to make more people more desperate.

especially if you have not worked for a few years.

The objective is to force the cohort who has retired recently back into the workforce. That is the cohort whose skills are relatively fresh, and they are the most able bodied. I would suspect the ability of a person to stand at a grill and flip burgers for hours on end declines sharply with age.

Such a policy change would also seriously crimp the number of new retirees each year. Joe applies for SS, but SS denies benefits because he has been working, prima facie evidence his is able bodied.

If they eliminate social security, a lot of people will just die.

That is the needle that has to be threaded: maintain benefits for the “truly needy” that are too feeble to work, while bringing the hammer to anyone who could flip burgers for ten hours a day. The trick is to define the impacted cohort narrowly enough that it is small enough to be ignored politically.
/Simon Legree mode

Steve

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The trust fund that backs Medicare Part A will be exhausted in 2026. After that, there will be an unfunded annual deficit of $58B in 27. rising to nearly $100B by 2030. The way to make sure all the hospital corporations are paid would be to cover the shortfall with a premium charged to SS recipients. There are currently some 56M elderly drawing SS, so the premium by 2030 would be less than $2/yr. Not a large enough bite to starve people back into the workforce.

I have to question the arithmetic here. If there are 56M drawing SS, and you charge them $2 per year, you will collect $112M (million) a year. If you want to collect about $100B (billion) from them annually, you will have to charge each of them about $2,000 a year.

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I have to question the arithmetic here. If there are 56M drawing SS, and you charge them $2 per year, you will collect $112M (million) a year. If you want to collect about $100B (billion) from them annually, you will have to charge each of them about $2,000 a year.

Yes, you are correct. That occurred to me after I hit the sack that night, I had conflated millions with billions. The extra bite in their SS check will be $2K/yr or about $167/month. The average monthly SS payout to retirees in March 22 was 1,665.18, so about a 10% extra bite to cover Medicare’s payouts.

Steve