Unemployment Claims Remain Sky-High, All But Undoing 10 Years Of Job Gains
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2020
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Retail spending, another key economic indicator, is also suffering: down a record 8.7% last month, the largest monthly fall since the Commerce Department began tracking retail sales three decades ago.
This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Kelly from Chicago, where Spring has finally started to arrive and the |
| 0:08.9 | frogs are waking up in my neighborhood. This podcast was recorded at. |
| 0:13.6 | I thought this was going to be like, I'm doing research in the rainforest, but no, she's |
| 0:17.1 | in Chicago. I love it. It's 2-11 Eastern on Thursday, April 16th. |
| 0:24.3 | This may have changed by the time you hear this. Enjoy the show. |
| 0:31.3 | That was so peaceful and stirring. I just want to listen to those frogs. |
| 0:34.5 | Can we keep that running for the whole podcast? That's as calm as I've been in weeks. That |
| 0:38.8 | was great. |
| 0:39.8 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Scott Detro. I'm covering the White House. |
| 0:45.3 | I'm Scott Horsley. I cover the economy. |
| 0:47.1 | And I'm Danielle Kertzley. But I also cover the economy. |
| 0:49.6 | And maybe we were all so soothed by that frog because the economic picture that we're |
| 0:55.2 | going to talk about today is not soothing. It's not pretty. In fact, it is another grim |
| 1:00.1 | week. Five million more people filed for unemployment benefits. Danielle Scott, we've been doing |
| 1:07.1 | these weekly economic check-ins the last few weeks since we last talked to you. Have |
| 1:11.9 | things gotten better or worse or about the same on the economic front? |
| 1:16.5 | Boy, that's a... It's hard to say things are getting better when you have more than |
| 1:22.4 | five million people filing for unemployment. But if there's any thin ray of sunshine in |
| 1:28.8 | that picture, it's a little bit fewer than filed the last two weeks. We had 6.8 million |
| 1:35.7 | two weeks ago, 6.6 million the week after that. And now we're down to 5.2 million. But |
| 1:42.0 | the cumulative job loss that those numbers represent is really bleak. |
| 1:47.5 | It's the difference between horrific or a hair less horrific maybe. I mean, also a thing |
... |
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