First-time claims for unemployment insurance totaled 1.5 million last week, well above the 1.3 million expected, CNBC reports.

This was the 13th straight week that claims have totaled above 1 million.

Paul Krugman: “If you listen hard, you can hear the sound of dead cats bouncing.“

“Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the economy faces significant long-term damage from higher unemployment and a wave of small business failures due to the coronavirus pandemic, despite recent signs of improvement,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Said Powell: “Until the public is confident that the disease is contained, a full recovery is unlikely… If not contained and reversed, the downturn could further widen gaps in economic well-being that the long expansion had made some progress in closing.”

The U.S. was once the world’s most competitive economy. Under Donald Trump it has fallen to 10th in a new ranking, Bloomberg reports.

“A new tremor is threatening to shake minority communities as protests over racial injustice sweep the country: A wave of evictions as a federal moratorium on kicking people out of their rental units expires,” Politico reports.

“The ban on evictions — which applies to rentals that are backed by the government — expires in a matter of weeks. On top of that, the federal boost to unemployment benefits that many laid-off workers have used to pay their rent is set to end July 31.”

“Black and Latino people are twice as likely to rent as white people, so they would be most endangered if the protection from removal is ended. But there’s no relief in sight from Congress, with Republicans and Democrats not even expected to begin negotiating a new economic relief package until after the July Fourth holiday.”

Axios: Fears grow of an eviction apocalypse.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC on Thursday that shutting down the economy for a second time to combat the spread of Covid-19 isn’t a viable option and could cause even more headaches for Americans.

Said Mnuchin: “We can’t shut down the economy again. I think we’ve learned that if you shut down the economy, you’re going to create more damage. And not just economic damage, but there are other areas and we’ve talked about this: medical problems and everything else that get put on hold. I think it was very prudent what the president did, but I think we’ve learned a lot.”

The Labor Department reports another 1.54 million Americans filed jobless claims last week, CNBC reports.

The total over the last 12 weeks is now 44.2 million.

“The coronavirus pandemic is splintering the world economy, and the extraordinary action needed means policy makers cannot risk a premature withdrawal of lifelines to businesses and the most vulnerable people, the OECD warned,” Bloomberg reports.

“It made the grim assessment in its quarterly outlook, where it forecast a global slump of 6% this year, more than the World Bank earlier this week. That’s based on a scenario of the virus continuing to recede. A second wave, which the OECD said is an equally likely scenario, could mean a 7.6% contraction.​”

Wall Street Journal: “The black unemployment rate, which at 5.8% in February was near the lowest since records began in 1972, tripled to 16.8% in May, according to the Labor Department.”

“The United States officially is in a recession. But Senate Republicans are still in no rush to dole out more coronavirus relief,” Politico reports.

“Buoyed by a surprisingly strong jobs report last week and the knowledge that some of Congress’ $2 trillion March spending package still hasn’t been spent, the Senate GOP remains noncommittal on both the timing and substance of the next piece of legislation. Bipartisan talks still haven’t begun in earnest, according to senators and aides, and the White House and senior Republican senators say they won’t start until July.”

Bloomberg: Jobs rebound spurs GOP calls for Congress to go slow on stimulus.

The National Bureau of Economic Research has determined that a recession began in the United States in February 2020.

“The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in June 2009 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 128 months, the longest in the history of U.S. business cycles dating back to 1854.”

Axios: “There was no doubt the U.S. was in the midst of a recession, given the shelter-in-place measures that brought economic activity to a near halt and caused millions of layoffs — but this is their fastest call yet, as it’s sometimes taken as long as a year to make such calls in the past.”

“When the U.S. government’s official jobs report for May came out on Friday, it included a note at the bottom saying there had been a major ‘error’ indicating that the unemployment rate likely should be higher than the widely reported 13.3 percent rate,” the Washington Post reports.

“The special note said that if this ‘misclassification error’ had not occurred, the ‘overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,’ meaning the unemployment rate would be about 16.3 percent for May, but that would still be an improvement from an unemployment rate of more than 19 percent for April, applying the same standards.”