Posted on 03/27/2025 6:56:09 AM PDT by lasereye
The numbers: Some 224,000 people who lost their jobs applied last week for unemployment benefits, a very low number that suggests the U.S. labor market is still in good shape even as trade wars reverberate through the economy.
Initial jobless claims excluding federal workers fell by 1,000 to 224,000 in the seven days that ended March 22, the government said.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Consumer confidence in where the economy is headed hits 12-year low
I believe the government workers are still being paid so they are not authorized for unemployment. However, if someday they are truly fired, many will apply for them.
Either that or they just are sticking to their true other job and the FedGov pay was just their grift revenue stream.
More likely scenario what you guessed. With 95% of federal workers working from home, it is easy to work in a 2nd job and collect 2 paychecks.
I'm not sure all federal workers are counted in the stats given here. They are paid from a different fund and I don't know who is paying into that fund. It appears that we taxpayers are funding the federal workers where private workers are funded through a payroll tax on employers.
You wouldn't know it from the cars in the parking lots. I ventured out from the boondocks to where the malls and strip malls are last weekend and the places were bustling. Crowds for big ticket items like gear at REI and electronics/appliances at Best Buy. Stopped to look at a newer 4runner on the way back home and couldn't get a salesman to ask a couple of questions because they were all busy.
Consumers may not be "confident" but they sure as hell are buying.
If they received a severance than most people don’t file until a period of time after their departure as their benefits would include that in the calculation and impact the payout anyway.
But yeah - I think we won’t see the impact until later in the summer.
IF Federal workers took a buyout thru Sept 30, the end of the fiscal YEAR-—THEY cannot also file for UNEMPLOYMENT.
YOU ARE CORRECT
So...
MSN want you to afraid of high unemployment because the Federal Government is stopping an entire welfare system of home based employees that are bankrupting the Treasury. That excessive spending has driven up interest rates, driven up inflation, and resulted in so many regulations that it starves the nation of small business and new businesses.
I will gladly take a recession to clean up the mess before we see the economic surge from real new jobs and manufacturing. Better a little pain now with an attempt to control fed gov and spending, then letting the entire system collapse so the Bolsheviks can take over.
Didn’t they all get eight months pay on the buyout? None who did she be allowed to double dip if they did!!
I have the impression that very few federal workers have actually lost their jobs. New hiring has been slowed to a crawl. Trump tried to fire recently hired probationary employees, but the courts have blocked that for the moment. A number of big, splashy announcements have been made about closing or massively downsizing various agencies, but the affected employees seem mostly to have been transferred or placed on leave while the dust settles.
The bottom line is that there is very little Trump can do about existing federal employees unless and until he seeks repeal of the Civil Service Act and a century and a half of law and legal precedent governing civil service protections.
Prior to Chester Arthur and the creation of the Civil Service rules, federal employment was at will, and the whole government was basically a political patronage system. Trump seems to want to return to that. He can’t, not by unilateral decree. The federal Civil Service was created for good reasons, including massive corruption and endemic incompetence in a patronage system. (I live in DC. If you think DC’s municipal employment scandal in the Marion Barry era is a model to be emulated, be my guest and go for it. Thank God for Anthony Williams and the Control Board that cracked the whip here, and set off DC’s revival.) If the Civil Service System has outlived its usefulness ... well, go ahead and make that case. Just remember that the other side wins elections from time to time as well.
Most of what has happened so far is no more than preparing the battlefield. Some Trump/Musk/DOGE initiatives seem deliberately designed to provoke court cases on decades of precedents that perhaps should be revisited and maybe reversed. Those will take several years to work their way through the courts. Others are probably for PR effect, to alert the public to the problems leading to the 2026 elections. Last but not least, Trump seems to want to revisit the impoundment and line item veto battles, which were fought out decades ago but which could be reconsidered.
As the law stands now, federal employees in good standing have elaborate civil service protections and cannot be summarily fired. An (overly) elaborate process is necessary, or an agency has to be formally abolished. And if Congress has authorized and appropriated funds for X, and the president signed that legislation, that is now law ... and X cannot be cancelled on a whim by the next president.
In the short run, Trump’s agenda is going to depend almost entirely on the fate of his FY 2026 budget, which he should be submitting soon. If he wants agency terminations, that is the soonest Congress can plausibly do it. If he wants Civil Service, impoundment, and line item veto reform, ditto.
If the dems recapture either the House or Senate in 2026, any chance of major legislative reform is dead. And whoever controls Congress after the next election, Trump will become a lame duck the day after the election. Lame duck presidents still have enormous influence, but the serious contenders on both sides will be positioning themselves for 2028, and their calculations will be dominated by whatever happens in November, 2026.
Trump’s window of opportunity to effect lasting change is going to close very soon. This is not unique to Trump. This is universally true of presidents in their final term. The punditry is always in an uproar over the last election and the cascade of current events. That part of the public that follows the pundits will continue to be distracted by every headfake and the constant chatter of irrelevancies. The professionals have identified the handful of decision points, are counting months, weeks and days until Decision Day, and are counting votes.
Them’s the facts. Is Trump going to get a big reconciliation bill, which can sidestep a democrat filibuster? Will a Republican Congress with micro-thin majorities in both houses of Congress be able to pass Trump’s budget ... and how will they get past the inevitable democrat filibuster? And will Trump’s FY 2026 budget actually cut as deep as Musk and DOGE seem to want? Everything else is smoke and mirrors.
Losing that Pennsylvania Senate seat this week in the special election spooked state and congressional Republicans across the country, for good reason. How did we lose a traditionally GOP seat in a district that was Trump +13 in the last election? Those two Florida House races and the Wisconsin Supreme Court race are huge. The pros are counting votes, and they know that if we don’t hold in 2026, it’s game over for serious legislative change. Yes, the calendar is brutal. But it’s a reality check that can’t be avoided.
bkmk
I’m definitely sure there are some of those.
No it’s because these gov’t workers are highly skilled and sought after people. They were able to easily find new work.
/sarcasm. LOL.
.fl8r
IIRC aren’t the ones who voluntarily quit being paid til September? The others probably have had a second job for years especially because they were all “working” from home
Still at full employment. Maybe over-full, many economists think 5% is full employment now since many workers are nimble and switch jobs more than in the past. People also relocate more than in the past.
Many keep ranting about irrelevant things when the elephant in the room is govt overspending and ever-rising federal debt leaving less fuel for the private sector. Going half-commie for the last 60 years didn’t work well
Consumer confidence is down, but that’s due to the media more than the business cycle. When the tariff deals are complete things will start looking better.
I would imagine we won’t see a huge increase until the fall. A lot of the “cuts” will be finalized at the start of the next fiscal year.
In addition, if there is ANY severance, the cut employee cannot file until the severance is exhausted. Many of those people will have new jobs by then.
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