I posted this link on the
Impact of the Coronavirus on Medicaid, Marketplace and the Uninsured back when the released unemployment figures were just 3.5 million. They did some modeling which used scenarios of Low, Moderate and High impacts (Low scenario assumes 10 million people lose jobs; Medium: 21 million; High: 33 million.)
Time to revisit that with the recent Unemployment stats.
Layoffs were so severe, they nearly wiped out 10 years of job gains in just two months, and the official US unemployment rate surged to 14.7% (23 million) at the end of April.
The government’s jobs report — as has been standard for years — workers are counted as “unemployed” only if they were out of work and searched for a job in the last four weeks. Or if they were on a temporary layoff, with an expectation of being recalled to work within six months.
It does not include the millions of workers who lost their jobs and did not search for work (est. 2.3 million) or those working part-time who had their hours reduced (10.9 million). Including those, the unemployment number (called the U6 number) is 22.6%.
The modeling for the Low Estimate was 10% and the Moderate was 17%. The High modeling number is 25%.
The WH Economic Advisor said after the 14.7% figure came out that they expect unemployment claims to reflect a figure in excess of 20% (not including the U6 numbers). Not all of those recently unemployed have been able to file. The uninsured number will lag that. But the High model estimates that 39-40 million will not have health insurance. That does not include an increase estimated at 23 million that are projected to find insurance through Medicaid (71 million pre-COVID, 94 million with the High model).
The chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, told "Face the Nation" Sunday.
"To get unemployment rates like the ones that we're about to see, to get back to your question, which I think will climb up towards 20% by next month, you have to really go back to the Great Depression to see thaI think you can expect to see jobs probably trough in May or June."
Nine million people obtain health insurance through the federal exchange, which would be abolished should SCOTUS find that the ACA is unconstitutional.
