#1 The number of Americans filing first time claims for unemployment benefits just hit the highest level in over a year…

The number of people filing for unemployment for the first time was at its highest levels in more than a year, partly due to storm damage and labor stoppages.

Initial jobless claims for the week ending Oct. 5 came in at 258,000, up 33,000 from last week’s level of 225,000, and the highest since it hit the same level in August 2023, data from the Labor Department shows.

#2 According to Primerica’s latest Financial Security Monitor report, the percentage of middle-income households that “rate their personal financial situation negatively” has hit the highest level that they have ever recorded…

Primerica’s latest Financial Security Monitor report for the third quarter found 55% of middle-income households now rate their personal financial situation negatively, a 6-point jump from the previous survey.

“For the first time in a year, a majority of middle-income households are feeling negative about their personal finances,” said Glenn Williams, CEO of Primerica. “In fact, this latest report represents the highest negative rating we’ve seen since we began fielding the survey exactly four years ago.”

#3 I am old enough to remember a time in this country when you were set for life if you had a million dollars.  Unfortunately, thanks to our endless cost of living crisis it now costs 4.4 million dollars to live “the American Dream” over the course of a lifetime…

You can live the American Dream, but it will cost you.

The lifetime tab for such aspirations as owning a home, driving new cars, raising kids and taking annual vacations comes to a cool $4.4 million, according to Investopedia, the financial media site.

That’s more than the average American earns in a lifetime.

#4 The company that produces more french fries than anyone else in North America is cutting production and laying off workers due to a dramatic slowdown in consumer demand…

Lamb Weston, the largest producer of french fries in North America and a major supplier to fast-food chains, restaurants and grocery stores, is closing a production plant in Washington state. The company announced last week that it would lay off nearly 400 employees, or 4% of its workforce, and temporarily cut production lines in response to slowing customer demand.

#5 At one time Boeing was flying high, but now it has decided to lay off approximately 10 percent of its entire workforce…

The CEO of Boeing told employees late Friday that the company plans to cut 10% of its total staff “over the coming months.”

“Our business is in a difficult position, and it is hard to overstate the challenges we face together,” said Kelly Ortberg, who started at CEO of the troubled aircraft maker two months ago and has been dealing with a strike by 33,000 hourly workers for half his time on the job.

#6 The banking industry continues to deeply struggle.  So far this year, banks in the United States have permanently shut down over 700 local branches…

US banks closed more than 700 branches in the first nine months of the year, forcing thousands to travel further to access vital services.

Bank of America closed the most locations of any bank, shuttering 132 between January and September.

U.S. Bank followed swiftly behind, having closed 101 of their own branches.

#7 After 75 years, True Value has been forced to file for bankruptcy and will be “selling substantially all of its operations to a rival”…

True Value, a 75-year old hardware store brand, has filed for bankruptcy and is selling substantially all of its operations to a rival, the company announced Monday.

In a press release, True Value said it will continue day-to-day operations of selling hardware and other homeware tools to its 4,500 independently operated locations during the Chapter 11 process, which includes a $153 million stalking horse bid from rival company Do it Best.

#8 Did you ever think that you would live to see a day when hundreds of 7-Eleven stores would be closing?  Sadly, that time has now arrived…

Several hundred “underperforming” 7-Eleven locations across North America are closing, the convenience store announced.

Seven & I Holdings, the chain’s Japan-based parent company, revealed in an earnings report Thursday that 444 locations of 7-Eleven are shutting down because of a variety of issues, including slowing sales, declining traffic, inflationary pressures and a decrease in cigarette purchases.

#9 Home Depot apparently believes that rough times are ahead, because they are dumping millions of square feet of warehouse space…

Home Depot is hastily exiting warehouse space, to the tune of 3.2 million square feet in a month, according to Bisnow.

Since late August, Home Depot has put up nearly 4 million square feet of warehouse space for sublease, including a 1.3M SF Phoenix warehouse and a 1.1M SF distribution center in the Inland Empire, according to CoStar Analytics.

#10 At this point, things are so bad that even Disney is laying off workers…

According to sources cited by Deadline, Disney is pushing ahead with new layoffs as part of a broader “cost-saving initiative.” About 300 employees across Disney’s corporate divisions will be impacted this week.

The layoffs of 300 employees began on Tuesday and will continue until the end of the week. They are all US-based employees who work across the company’s corporate operations, including legal, HR, finance, and communications.

If you have recently lost your job, I feel very badly for you, because the employment market has gotten a lot more “complicated” than it was in the old days.

Once upon a time, being good at what you do was enough.

But now other considerations are often more important than pure merit…

A top Oregon state official has been put on administrative leave after a pink-haired, DEI-obsessed subordinate complained he was making hiring decisions based on qualifications instead of personal identity considerations, according to a report.

Mike Shaw, who until recently served as the Oregon Department of Forestry’s second-in-command, was put on blast by Megan Donecker, the department’s former DEI strategy officer, for looking “beyond gender and identity in hiring, seeking only candidates most qualified for the job,” OregonLive reported.

He was formally placed on administrative leave Aug. 6 after Donecker filed a formal complaint, according to the Daily Mail.

Isn’t that nuts?

Our society is getting crazier with each passing day, and I am deeply concerned about where all of this is heading.

Sadly, the tough economic times that we are experiencing now are not even worth comparing to the pain that is coming if we don’t turn things around.

Our system is literally crumbling right in front of our eyes, and unless something dramatic happens economic conditions in this country will soon become extremely harsh.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

The panic that we witnessed on Friday was quite breathtaking, and many are concerned that it could bleed over into the new week.  Investors are desperate for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, but so far the Fed has not moved.

On Friday, many were surprised when the employment numbers were much worse than anticipated…

U.S. job growth cooled sharply in July while the unemployment rate unexpectedly rose to the highest level in nearly three years.

The Labor Department on Friday reported that employers added 114,000 jobs in July, missing the 175,000 gain forecast by LSEG economists. The unemployment rate also unexpectedly inched higher to 4.3% against expectations that it would hold steady at 4.1%.

It marked the highest level for the jobless rate since October 2021.

Please keep in mind that the U.S. economy must produce at least 150,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with population growth. So even if we did add 114,000 jobs last month, we would still be losing ground.

But the only reason why the official figure showed an addition of 114,000 jobs last month is because the birth/death model added 246,000 jobs to the final number…

Of course, we can’t possibly forget that every jobs number is highly manipulated and rigged, and July was no difference with the Birth/Death model adding a ridiculous 246K “statistical” jobs to the unadjusted print. Which it does not translate apples to apples, one can confidently say that the actual adjusted payrolls number would be far, far smaller had it not been for this ongoing fabrication.

It isn’t difficult to get a positive employment report every month when you are “adjusting” the final number by about a quarter of a million jobs that you just “assume” are being created somehow.

In any event, even if we take the government’s report at face value, the Sahm Rule has still been officially triggered…

That’s because the rise in unemployment triggered the so-called Sahm Rule, an indicator that is used to provide an early recession signal. The rule stipulates that a recession is likely when the three-month moving average of the jobless rate is at least a half-percentage point higher than the 12-month low.

Over the past three months, the unemployment rate has averaged 4.13%, which is 0.63 percentage points higher than the 3.5% rate recorded in July 2023. The Sahm Rule has successfully predicted every recession since 1970.

Even though this indicator has successfully predicted every single recession since 1970, Fed Chair Jerome Powell insists that it may not be correct this time around…

Fed Chair Jerome Powell responded to a question about the rule at a news conference Wednesday following the Fed’s decision to keep the key interest rate unchanged. “It’s not like an economic rule where it’s telling you something must happen.” He continued, “what we think we’re seeing is a normalizing labor market and we’re watching carefully to see if it turns out to be more.”

Unfortunately, it appears to be inevitable that the unemployment rate will go even higher because large companies all over America continue to shed workers. In fact, last week Intel announced that it will be “cutting 15% of its workforce”…

Months after the federal government gave Intel $8.5 billion in grants to help bring back chipmaking to the U.S., the company said it is cutting 15% of its workforce, which translates to around 17,000 jobs.

The tech company announced the job cuts as part of a massive cost-cutting and restructuring plan.

Of course Intel is far from alone.

Businesses from coast to coast have fallen on hard times, and business bankruptcy filings have risen by more than 40 percent during the past 12 months…

Over the past year, business bankruptcy filings are up 40.3 percent, and have now reached a number not seen since the second quarter of 2020, at the peak of lockdowns. American households are following along, with total bankruptcy filings up 16.2 percent in the past year, including 132,710 new filings in the second quarter of 2024 alone.

The last time business bankruptcy filings were this high was during the lockdowns in the early days of the COVID pandemic.

But we don’t have any lockdowns to blame the current wave of bankruptcies on.

What we are witnessing now is really quite scary.

Hordes of businesses are failing, and commercial real estate values have been crashing hard…

Brookfield owned Gas Company Tower in Downtown LA has plummeted over $400M in value

The skyscraper was recently valued at $214.5M

It was appraised at $632M just 3 years ago

This is a commercial real estate apocalypse

Right now, our banks are sitting on gigantic mountains of commercial real estate loans that have gone bad. For many of those banks, it is just a matter of time before they go belly up.

But don’t just take my word for it.  Recently, a number of prominent experts have been warning that a tsunami of bank failures is on the way…

The echoes began in May.

Barry Sternlicht of Starwood Capital Group predicted a regional bank failure “every day or every week.”

Days later, Newmark Chair Howard Lutnick warned, “Every single weekend a regional bank is going to go bye-bye,” and predicted 500 to 1,000 failures in 2025 and 2026 — as did alternative lenders speaking at the same event. In June, PIMCO’s head of global private commercial real estate joined the chorus.

Yes, this is really happening.

A tremendous amount of financial chaos is in our future, and most people are going to be completely blindsided by it.

There is one thing that the Federal Reserve could do to mitigate the damage.

If the Fed started cutting interest rates immediately, that would certainly help.

But so far, the Fed has refused to budge.

We are being told that the Fed “might” give us a rate cut in September. That isn’t going to do the job.

We need help now, because major problems are already starting to erupt all around us.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

As you will see below, some people haven’t been hired even though they have literally applied for hundreds of jobs.  There seems to be an enormous disconnect between what is actually happening in the real economy and the economic narrative that they are constantly pushing.  By the time you are done reading this article, I think that you will agree with me.

Earlier this week, I received an email from a reader that has not been able to find work after seven months of searching.

He gave me permission to share part of that email with you, and it is certainly quite heartbreaking…

Hi Michael,

I am a long-time reader of theeconomiccollapseblog.com, and your recent article comparing the economy to the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s” really stood out to me.

I’m really trying to figure out WHY it is so hard to find a job.

I was laid off from my job as a Custodial Foreman in September 2023, and have had ZERO results for my countless hours spent searching for comparable work.

I don’t know if you want to use any of this for an article or not, but if you do, please just keep doing what you normally do: Praising Jesus Christ. Without my faith in him I don’t know what I’d do.

When I wake up, I make coffee and turn on the computer and go through the state’s unemployment job search sites they provided me when I was laid off. I have been looking and also applying for jobs DAILY since September 2023. And these are not “rocket science” positions; I’m simply looking for Maintenance or Custodial or Groundskeeper type jobs. You know, “normal working class” type jobs.

But after ~300 applications (And these are all just to the jobs that I not only have experience for but also would actually want to do), I have had 1 interview. One interview in 7 months of applying and sending tailored cover letters with, daily!

If the economy is doing so “great”, why can’t he find employment?

Some of you may be tempted to think that he is just an isolated case.

Well, here is another example of an experienced worker that has applied for approximately 300 jobs without any success…

Royal Siu, who lives in Seattle and is trained as a pharmacist, likes to make his friends guess how many jobs he’s applied to. They’ll often toss out some number around 40, he told BI. He’ll tell them to keep going. Most give up by the time they reach 100. That’s when Siu drops that he’s applied to about 300 jobs. “It’s usually a shock factor to them,” he said.

Siu, who’s trying to use his pharmacy degree to work in other parts of healthcare, is finding it harder to land interviews than in a prior job search. The 28-year-old was getting more phone screenings and first and second interviews in the past. This time, it’s been a couple of months since he had a screening call. So he continues to turn to his network but also doesn’t stop applying.

What in the world is going on here?

I thought that there were “millions” of good jobs just waiting for someone to step into them.

Something definitely does not add up.

Even Americans with advanced degrees from top schools are increasingly finding themselves out of work.

If you doubt this, just check out these numbers…

Even at some top business schools, the number of recently minted M.B.A.s without jobs has roughly doubled from a couple of years ago, when U.S. companies were rushing to hire as many workers as they could, according to data from the schools.

At Harvard Business School, 20% of job-seeking 2023 M.B.A. graduates didn’t have one three months after graduation, up from 8% in 2021. At Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, 18% didn’t, compared with 9% in 2021. About 13% of those at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management didn’t have a job within three months, up from about 5% in 2021.

How are those numbers possible if the unemployment rate is hovering near “historic lows”?

Of course the truth is that we have been sold a lie.

If you do not have a job, you are classified by the U.S. government as either “unemployed” or “not in the labor force”.

In 2008 and 2009, the combined total of those two categories never even reached 90 million. Today, the combined total of those two categories is over 106 million.

The Biden administration says that only 6,429,000 Americans are officially “unemployed”. The other 99,989,000 Americans without a job are considered to be “not in the labor force”.

And more will be lumped into those two categories soon, because large employers all over the nation continue to conduct mass layoffs.

For example, thousands of Tesla workers in California and Texas were just notified that they will be losing their jobs…

The notifications in California and Texas, where the electric vehicle (EV) maker has large presences, came in the form of WARN notices, according to reports.

In California, the planned Tesla headcount reductions will hit approximately 3,300 workers, The San Francisco Standard reported Tuesday.

They will apparently occur at locations in a total of four different cities in the Golden State.

Meanwhile, Texas will see almost 2,700 employees in Austin lose their jobs, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Sadly, the pace of layoffs is likely to increase during the months ahead, because business activity in the U.S. is declining…

The U.S. economy lost momentum in April, a pair of S&P surveys found, as businesses reported a decline in new orders and reduced employment for the first time since the pandemic.

The flash U.S. manufacturing purchasing managers index slipped to a four-month low of 49.9 in April from 51.9 in March.

The S&P flash U.S. services PMI fell to a five-month low of 50.9 this month from 51.7 in March.

The surveys are the first indicators of each month to give a sense of how the U.S. economy is performing.

Meanwhile, the cost of living crisis just continues to escalate. Shockingly, at one station in California gasoline now costs $7.29 per gallon…

Soaring gas prices have skyrocketed to a whopping $7.29 per gallon in some parts of California – which is above the current the national hourly minimum wage.

While the average price for a gallon of gas varies from state to state – drivers in a certain Silicon Valley town are facing particularly extortionate rates that set them back almost $150 for a full tank.

The Chevron gas station in Menlo Park was exposed on Sunday by a bewildered customer who posted on X that the price per gallon was four cents ‘above the federal hourly minimum wage.’

If you think that this is bad, just wait until the war in the Middle East transforms into the apocalyptic conflict that I believe it will become.

I am entirely convinced that inflation will continue to be a major problem even as economic activity in the U.S. slows down even more.

We are already experiencing “stagflation”. What is eventually coming will be so much worse than that.

Of course the economic pain that we are going through is just one of the factors that is systematically destroying our nation.

A Warning to America: 25 Ways the US is Being Destroyed | Explained in Under 2 Minutes pic.twitter.com/qwmBO8DmMt

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 22, 2024

Just about all of our major institutions are crumbling, just about every sector of our society is in the process of melting down, and conditions are rapidly getting worse all around us.

And now we are heading into the most chaotic election season in the entire history of our country.

This is a recipe for disaster, but there is no turning back now.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

It appears that the bureaucrats in Washington have gotten so lazy that they aren’t even bothering to change the fake numbers that they are giving us.  Even though large companies are conducting mass layoffs all over America, week after week we are given laughable numbers that indicate that everything is just fine.

At this point, the charade has become such a farce that even CNBC has published an article about this…

Calling the state of the U.S. jobs market these days stable seems like an understatement considering the latest data coming out of the Labor Department.

That’s because most of the past several weeks have shown that first-time claims for unemployment benefits haven’t fluctuated at all — as in zero.

For five of the past six weeks, the level of initial jobless filings totaled exactly 212,000. Given a labor force that is 168 million strong, achieving such stasis seems at least unusual if not uncanny, yet that is what the figures released each Thursday morning since mid-March have shown.

Jim Bianco, the head of Bianco Research, was the first one to call attention to the absurdity of getting the exact same number for five of the past six weeks…

“How is this statistically possible? Five of the last six weeks, the exact same number,” market veteran Jim Bianco, head of Bianco Research, posted Thursday on X.

“Initial claims for unemployment insurance are state programs, with 50 state rules, hundreds of offices, and 50 websites to file. Weather, seasonality, holidays, and economic vibrations drive the number of people filing claims from week to week,” he added. “Yet this measure is so stable that it does not vary by even 1,000 applications a week.”

He is right. Something definitely does not smell right about all of this.

Below is the number of initial filings for unemployment insurance.

How is this statistically possible?

Five of the last six weeks, the exact same number.

Effectively the same number in the last 11 weeks, except for the holiday weeks (President's Day and Easter).
—
Consider… pic.twitter.com/vZbWWC7DRr

— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) April 18, 2024

Of course it isn’t just for the past few months that we have been given fishy numbers.

For a couple of years, jobless claims have stayed within a certain range no matter what has been happening in the real economy.

I simply do not have any faith in the official numbers that they give us any longer, and I don’t understand how anyone else can either.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of announced job cuts in the U.S. in March was 7 percent higher than the already elevated level that we witnessed in February…

Employers in the U.S. announced 90,309 job cuts in March — a 7% increase from February, according to data released Thursday from executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

That amount of planned layoffs mark the highest monthly total since January 2023, when employers announced 102,943 cuts. Companies are cutting jobs as a result of store closures, bankruptcies, organizational restructuring or general cost-cutting, Challenger said. The cuts suggest that “many companies appear to be reverting to a ‘do more with less’ approach,” Senior Vice President Andy Challenger said in a statement.

“While technology continues to lead all industries so far this year, several industries, including energy and industrial manufacturing, are cutting more jobs this year than last,” he said.

But all of these layoffs haven’t even made a blip in the initial jobless claims numbers.

How is that possible?

And the BLS says that the unemployment rate actually went down in February…

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday showed the labor market added 303,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in March, significantly more than the 214,000 expected by economists. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate decreased to 3.8% from 3.9% in February.

If the unemployment rate in the U.S. really was just 3.8 percent, I would certainly be celebrating. But that is another number that is so manipulated that it has essentially become meaningless.

If you are not working in America today, you are put into one of two categories. Either you are classified as “unemployed” or you are classified as “not in the labor force”.

According to the most recent BLS number, 6,429,000 Americans are considered to be officially “unemployed”. But another 99,989,000 Americans are considered to be “not in the labor force”.

When you add those two numbers together, you get more than 106 million U.S. adults that do not have a job right now.

During the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, that combined figure never even reached 90 million. But we had a horrifying “unemployment crisis” in 2008 and 2009, and today everything is just fine.

Give me a break. They are gaslighting us really hard, and the vast majority of Americans are going right along with it.

After all, if the government is telling us something it must be true, right? Sadly, the truth is that we are in the terminal phase of the largest debt crisis in the history of the world.

When Barack Obama entered the White House, we were about 10 trillion dollars in debt.

Now we are 34 trillion dollars in debt…

The U.S. national debt is climbing at a rapid pace and has shown no signs of slowing down, despite the growing criticism of massive levels of government spending.

The national debt — which measures what the U.S. owes its creditors — increased to $34,576,488,508,928.92 as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the latest numbers published by the Treasury Department. That is down about $14.5 billion from the $34,591,001,330,876.91 figure reported the previous day.

By comparison, just four decades ago, the national debt hovered around $907 billion.

About every 100 days, we are adding another trillion dollars to the debt. We are stealing gigantic mountains of money from future generations of Americans in order to make the present more pleasant.

Our politicians are injecting trillions upon trillions of borrowed dollars into the economy, and so our economy should be going gangbusters. But it isn’t. So what would things look like if the borrowing stopped and we actually tried to live within our means?

You might want to think about that for a while. Because this debt cycle is coming to an end, and the crash that is ahead of us is going to be far more horrible than most people would dare to imagine.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Take, for instance, the latest jobs report. For the third month in a row, the American economy added significantly more jobs than most economists had been expecting—a total of 303,000 for March. On its face, that’s a good number.

But as Ryan McMaken laid out over the weekend, things don’t look as strong when you dig into the data. For instance, virtually all the jobs added are part-time jobs. Full-time jobs have actually been disappearing since December of last year. In fact, as McMaken highlighted, “The year-over-year measure of full-time jobs has fallen into recession territory.”

Also, most of these new part-time jobs are going to immigrants, many of whom are in the country illegally. There has been zero job creation for native-born Americans since mid-2018. While immigrants are not harming the economy by working, the scale of new foreign-born workers has papered over the employment struggles of the native-born population.

Further, government jobs accounted for almost a quarter of those added—way above the standard ten to twelve percent. Just like with government spending and economic growth, government hiring boosts the official jobs number while draining the actual, value-producing economy.

Some economists, like Daniel Lacalle, argue that the US economy is already experiencing a private-sector recession but that government spending and hiring are propping up the official data enough to hide it.

A recession is inevitable, thanks to the last decade of interest rate manipulation by the Federal Reserve—and especially to its dramatic actions during the pandemic. The recession-like conditions in full-time jobs is further evidence that Lacalle is right.

But jobs numbers are only part of the story. The stock market has been fluctuating a lot recently, not because of changing consumer needs or the adoption of some new technology, but based on what Federal Reserve officials are saying about what the central bank will do this year.

At the same time, prices are still high. And they continue to rise at a rate that frustrates even some of President Joe Biden’s biggest economic cheerleaders. Our dollars are worth about 20 percent less than they were four years ago, with no prospect of that trend reversing. That hurts.

But instead of addressing this economic pain, much less their role in creating it, members of the political class are still pretending everything is great. They’re even gearing up to make things worse by, for example, sending even more of our money to the Ukrainian government. All to prolong a war it’s losing, not because of a lack of money, but because of a lack of soldiers.

And at home, President Biden is scrambling to put the brakes on energy production and to transfer money from the working class to his base of college graduates, all before he’s up for reelection in November.

Predictably and appropriately, the establishment’s head-in-the-sand economic strategy is coinciding with a notable decrease in support for the Democrats—the establishment’s preferred party these days. President Biden is behind in the polls in six of the seven swing states and is losing support from working-class and nonwhite voters.

The political establishment and its preferred candidates deserve to lose support, not only for failing to acknowledge America’s economic problems but for causing them in the first place.

Sound off about this article on The Economic Collapse Substack.

Why would all of these large companies be doing this if the outlook for the U.S. economy is promising?  That wouldn’t make any sense at all.  But if these companies are convinced that the U.S. economy is heading into a recession (or worse), it would make perfect sense to slash payrolls at this time.

To me, the most accurate numbers that we get are those that come from non-government sources.  And so I was greatly alarmed to learn that Challenger, Gray & Christmas has just published a report which shows that the number of layoffs in the United States went up by 136 percent from December to January…

The pace of job cuts by U.S. employers accelerated at the start of 2024, a sign the labor market is starting to deteriorate in the face of ongoing inflation and high interest rates.

That is according to a new report published by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which found that companies planned 82,307 job cuts in January, a substantial 136% increase from the previous month.

So what should we call it when the number of layoffs in our country goes up by 136 percent in just one month?

A catastrophe?

A tsunami?

I don’t know.

According to the report, financial companies laid off more workers than anyone else in January…

Financial companies bore the brunt of the job losses in January, with the industry shedding 23,238 employees. That is the highest monthly layoff total for the financial sector since September 2018, when it announced 27,343 job cuts.

The technology sector followed with 15,806 layoffs, the most since May 2023 and a stunning 254% increase from just one month prior.

Let’s talk about the financial industry for a moment.

Our banks are in very serious trouble.  Higher interest rates have hit them very hard, and many institutions have been forced to lay off workers in recent months.

In addition, U.S. banks have been permanently shutting down hundreds and hundreds of branches in a desperate attempt to save money…

Banks are shutting hundreds of branches a year – this month some 41 closures were announced in a single week and among those affected were nine US Bank locations.

Bank of America, Chase, PNC, Citizen, Capital One, First National Bank of Pennsylvania and Huntington also said they were axing branches.

Such closures deal a huge blow to customers looking to visit in person to submit a document, make a withdrawal or deposit, cash in a check or simply run through their finances with a trusted bank manager.

This is a trend that I expect to continue all throughout 2024.

Meanwhile, the tech industry continues to bleed jobs at an alarming pace. On Thursday, Zoom announced that 150 employees would be hitting the bricks…

Zoom is cutting about 150 jobs, CNBC confirmed on Thursday, the latest tech company to slash headcount this year as investors continue to push for efficiency.

I thought that Zoom was doing quite well. I guess not.

Identity management company Okta is giving the axe to even more workers than Zoom is…

Identity management company Okta said on Thursday in a message to employees that it would lay off 400 employees, which is about 7% of the company’s headcount. Okta also reaffirmed its fourth-quarter and full-year guidance in a securities filing.

CEO Todd McKinnon said in his message that the “reality is that costs are still too high.”

So many layoff announcements are coming in now that I can’t possibly keep up with them all.

But there is one more that I wanted to specifically mention in this article.  The Messenger is shutting down all operations, and all of their employees will now be searching for new employment…

The Messenger, an online news site that promoted itself to deliver unbiased and trusted news, abruptly shut down Wednesday after eight months of operation.

Jimmy Finkelstein, the founder of The Messenger, sent an email to its over 300 employees announcing the immediate shutdown.

This is such a stunning development.

In less than a year, the publication burned through 50 million dollars…

The Messenger received $50 million in investor money in order to launch in May 2023 with hopes of growing its newsroom relatively fast. With experienced journalists joining their team, Finkelstein’s plan was to bring back the old days of journalism that he and his family once shared.

How in the world did they manage to burn through 50 million dollars in less than a year?

Did they have employees flushing hundred dollar bills down the toilets?

I just don’t understand.

The layoffs that I mentioned above are just the tip of the iceberg.

Zero Hedge has put together a list of some of the most notable layoffs that we have seen during the past few months…

1. Twitch: 35% of workforce
2. Hasbro: 20% of workforce
3. Spotify: 17% of workforce
4. Levi’s: 15% of workforce
5. Zerox: 15% of workforce
6. Qualtrics: 14% of workforce
7. Wayfair: 13% of workforce
8. Duolingo: 10% of workforce
9. Washington Post: 10% of workforce
10. eBay: 9% of workforce
11. Business Insider: 8% of workforce
12. Paypal: 7% of workforce
13. Charles Schwab: 6% of workforce
14. UPS: 2% of workforce
15. Blackrock: 3% of workforce
16. Citigroup: 20,000 employees
17. Pixar: 1,300 employees

Needless to say, there are quite a few more that could have been added to that list.

Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and Sports Illustrated are just a few names that quickly come to mind.

We have been anticipating that a massive wave of layoffs would be coming, and now it is here.

Just in time for the most chaotic election season in our history, a great deal of economic chaos is breaking out all around us.

The outlook for the rest of 2024 is not good at all, and the outlook beyond 2024 is even worse.

So many people are going to lose their jobs during the months ahead. Just pray that you will not be one of them.

Sound off about this story on our Economic Collapse Substack.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

• 38% of companies say they are likely to have layoffs in 2024
• 52% are likely to implement a hiring freeze in 2024
• Half say anticipation of a recession is a reason for potential layoffs
• 4 in 10 say layoffs are due to replacing workers with artificial intelligence (AI)
• 3 in 10 companies reducing or eliminating holiday bonuses this year

If you currently have a job that you highly value, try to hold on to it as tightly as you can.

Because the employment market is starting to shift in a major way.

In recent weeks, so many large U.S. companies have been announcing layoffs…

Nike has announced a $2 billion cutback over the next three years, with an uncertain number of job cuts included. Toy giant Hasbro will cut nearly 20% of its workforce in 2024, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal. Music service Spotify announced a third round of layoffs. A recent email from CEO Daniel Ek says the company plans to cut its workforce by nearly 20%. Roku is going to be limiting new hires, and laying off about 10% of its workforce, while Amazon layoffs are effecting its new gaming division (all 180 jobs there are being eliminated). Citi CEO Jane Fraser announced layoffs in September, and sources have told CNBC that the bank could let go of at least 10% of its workforce, across several business lines. Flexport Logistics plans to cut up to 30% of its employees, and financial services company Charles Schwab is cutting back by 5-6% of its workforce, according to reports from Business Insider.

Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Many more layoffs are on the way.

Meanwhile, retailers continue to close stores at an astounding pace…

With the continued rise of online shopping, along with record inflation, it’s no wonder that retailers are suffering steep financial losses. Unfortunately, this means that companies all across the U.S. are downsizing brick-and-mortar storefronts to make ends meet. In 2023, we’ve seen closures from big-name retailers and local shops alike—and the shutdowns don’t appear to be easing up anytime soon.

More than 3,000 retail locations were shut down in 2023, but that is nothing compared to what is coming…

According to UBS equity analyst Michael Lasser, the U.S. remains over-retailed. Lasser estimated that the U.S. will shed almost 50,000 retail stores by 2028. He cites rising operating costs and a higher proportion of e-commerce sales, causing retailers to look closely at store locations and performance.

Can you imagine what our communities will look like if that projection is even close to accurate?

As economic conditions deteriorate, people are going to get more desperate and the conditions in our streets will become even more chaotic.

You may not have heard about this yet, but earlier this week a giant mob of more than 100 young people savagely looted a bakery in Compton, California…

A mob of over 100 looters purposefully crashed a Kia into a small bakery in Compton, Calif., before they flooded in and ransacked the store during a night of rampage on the streets earlier this week.

The thieves had gathered in the area for an illegal street takeover around 3 a.m. Tuesday before making the mile-long trek to Ruben’s Bakery & Mexican Food.

When they got to the locked store, a white Kia backed into the front doors, clearing an entryway for the crowd of pillagers to get to their loot.

We aren’t talking about a handful of lawless individuals.

Literally dozens and dozens of lawless young people looted this small store, and they did not hesitate to take whatever they wanted.

Most of you are probably not even aware that this happened, and that is because this story barely made a blip in the news cycle.

And the reason why it barely made a blip in the news cycle is because this sort of thing has become quite common in our country.

The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is rapidly disappearing. Let me give you another example.

One couple in California that thought it would be a good idea to use an online marketplace to sell an iPad ended up deeply regretting that decision…

This is the moment a California couple was robbed of their iPad at gunpoint in broad daylight by two teenagers.

Eduardo Reyes and his wife had listed the device on OfferUp on December 23.

The teens contacted them and asked to meet in a residential neighborhood in Pomona.

‘They wanted to meet in a public street which I usually don’t do, but he sounded like he was a kid and he’s like, “Oh, I’m going to have my mom come out with me”,’ Reyes told KTLA.

These days it is so hard to know who you can trust, and that is because a very large portion of the population is no longer trustworthy.

If things are this bad now, what do you think is going to happen once economic conditions become extremely harsh in the United States? The chaos that we are currently seeing in the streets is nothing compared to the chaos that is coming.

Our society really is coming apart at the seams right in front of our eyes. And now we are headed toward the most hotly contested presidential election in our history, and that will bring societal tensions to a boiling point.

Leave your thoughts about this story on the Economic Collapse Substack.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

They tell us that inflation is low, but if it was still measured the way that it was back in 1980, the official rate of inflation would be well into double digit territory.  And they tell us that the unemployment rate is low, but if honest numbers were being used the official rate of unemployment would be about 25 percent right now.  There are highly qualified people that can’t even get an interview even though they are sending out hundreds and hundreds of resumes.  What are they doing wrong?

Of course the truth is that they aren’t doing anything wrong.  The employment market is far tighter than we are being led to believe, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

When a working age American is not working, the government puts that individual into one of two categories. Right now, there are only 6.5 million U.S. adults that are officially considered to be “unemployed”.

But another 99.9 million U.S. adults are considered to be “not in the labor force”.  So they don’t count as being “unemployed”.

When you add those two numbers together, you get a grand total of 106.4 million U.S. adults that do not have a job right now. At no point during the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 did that number even reach 90 million. So don’t let anyone convince you that unemployment is low.

The elite are trying to do their best to convince us that everything is just fine, but meanwhile the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has now fallen for 19 months in a row…

A key measure of the direction of the U.S. economy fell for the 19th straight month and once again indicated that a recession is looming.

The leading economic index fell 0.8 percent in October, the Conference Board said Monday. The LEI is based on 10 indicators that tend to forecast the direction of the economy.

Economists had expected a milder decline of 0.8 percent.

The last time the index declined for 19 months in a row was during the Great Recession when it fell from the end of 2007 through 2009.

The last streak of this magnitude started in 2007. But we didn’t have a recession in 2007. And things still seemed relatively fine in early 2008 too.

Of course then we got to the end of 2008 and everything fell to pieces. That is why they are called “leading” economic indicators.

They tell us what is coming.

And what is coming in our time is not going to be fun.

Needless to say, most of the population is not prepared at all for a major economic storm.

Survey after survey has shown that most of the U.S. population is currently living paycheck to paycheck…

The majority of U.S. adults are living paycheck to paycheck heading into this holiday season, a report shows.

LendingClub’s latest report shows that as of October, 60 percent of adults said they are living paycheck to paycheck. Around 40 percent of consumers consider themselves to be worse off now than in 2022.

Even higher earners are struggling to get by, with 42 percent of those making six figures also living check-to-check under President Joe Biden.

According to a separate CNBC survey, the number of adults struggling to save between checks is up from 58 percent in March.

As long as those paychecks keep coming in, they can keep scraping by from month to month.

But now layoffs are starting to surge again all over the nation.

Young Americans are in particularly dire straits.

Millions upon millions of young Americans have low paying jobs and are deeply struggling with student loan debt, and this is one of the reasons why the average age of a U.S. homebuyer just keeps going higher and higher…

The average American homebuyer is now 49-years-old – 18 years older than in 1981 – as inflation, college costs and house prices make it harder for young people to get a foot on the ladder.

Research by the National Association of Realtors has revealed that the median age of all homebuyers has steadily crept up over the past forty years.

The most shocking contrast is for first time buyers where the median age is now 35, up from 31 in 2013 and 29 in 1981.

The American Dream is now out of reach for most of the nation, and that is especially true among those that are under the age of 40.

But the mainstream media absolutely refuses to acknowledge the truth.

They just keep telling us that things look great for the U.S. economy in 2024 and beyond.  The following comes from a Yahoo Finance article entitled “The election year economy looks good for Biden”…

The much-predicted recession still hasn’t arrived. Will it materialize in 2024, at the worst possible moment for President Joe Biden, as he’s trying to convince voters to give him a second term?

It’s not looking that way. As economists roll out their forecasts for 2024, the prevailing theme is moderation: slowing but still-positive economic growth, a declining rate of inflation, and continued low unemployment.

Seriously? Come on man. Do they actually expect us to consume that pablum?

We are already in an economic crisis right now, and things are going to get so much worse during the years ahead.

You can stick your head in the sand and pretend that everything is okay if you want. But nothing is going to change the fact that the “endgame” has arrived.

Decades of very foolish decisions have brought us to this stage, and now we are truly going to reap what we have sown.

Sound off about this article on our Economic Collapse Substack.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

More than 219,000 global technology-sector employees have been laid off since the start of 2023, according to data compiled by the website Layoffs.fyi.

That number has gone up more than eightfold since mid-January, the website noted.

The data show that 2023 has easily surpassed 2022 for global tech redundancies, with 869 tech companies laying off 219,809 employees since the start of the year. Last year, 1,024 tech companies laid off a total of 154,336 employees, according to Layoffs.fyi.

For some of our largest tech companies, one round of layoffs was simply not enough.

For example, after laying off 10,000 workers earlier this year, Microsoft has decided that another round of layoffs has now become necessary…

Microsoft confirmed Monday that it’s eliminating additional jobs, a week after the start of its 2024 fiscal year.

The cuts are in addition to the downsizing announced in January that resulted in 10,000 layoffs. The software maker also disclosed a small number of cuts this time last year.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has already conducted three rounds of layoffs so far in 2023…

Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. (META) also made its latest round of layoffs in late May, according to reports, marking the tech giant’s third set of cuts this year. Meta declined to comment in response to a request from MarketWatch for confirmation of the latest layoffs. The company’s second round of layoffs in April cut technical positions, according to LinkedIn posts. Meta is in the midst of cutting 21,000 jobs in 2023 as part of what CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described as a “year of efficiency” for the company.

What we are witnessing is complete and utter carnage, but the mainstream media is not making a big deal out of all this.

After all, it wouldn’t be good to make Joe Biden look bad, would it?

But no matter what sort of positive spin the Biden administration tries to put on things, the layoffs just keep on coming.  For example, on Friday we learned that Binance has decided to give the axe to more than 1,000 highly paid workers…

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has cut jobs just days after it was hit by a wave of executive exits, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

The layoffs at the world’s biggest crypto exchange come at a time when the industry’s future in the U.S. market is uncertain, with regulators aggressively clamping down on what they deem are illegal activities.

The job cuts were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said more than 1,000 people had been let go in recent weeks.

I could go on with example after example.

Goldman Sachs has decided to lay off workers, and so has Wells Fargo. And now that Tucker Carlson is gone, Fox News has determined that this is the perfect time to conduct “company-wide” layoffs…

Fox News is reportedly beginning “company-wide” layoffs, including of the remaining former employees of Tucker Carlson.

The development was reported on Friday by journalist and Carlson biographer Chadwick Moore, who published a screenshot of an email informing employees of the impending action.

The email ordered the recipients to turn in all company equipment and their ID badges at 9 p.m. after the conclusion of the show they were working on.

It is beginning to look a lot like 2008, and there will be so many heartbreaking stories in the months ahead.

Bankruptcies are surging, and vast numbers of businesses are starting to fail. In San Francisco, Anchor Brewery will be ceasing operations after 127 years in business, and so all of their workers will be losing their jobs…

After 127 years in business, San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Company is shutting down.

According to a press release, the brewery has been facing challenging economic factors and declining sales since 2016.

“This was an extremely difficult decision that Anchor reached only after many months of careful evaluation,” Anchor Brewing spokesperson Sam Singer said. “We recognize the importance and historic significance of Anchor to San Francisco and to the craft brewing industry, but the impacts of the pandemic, inflation, especially in San Francisco, and a highly competitive market left the company with no option but to make this sad decision to cease operations.”

But even though they can see what is happening, officials at the Federal Reserve just keep telling us that more interest rate hikes are coming.

They insist that they can dramatically hike interest rates and engineer a “soft landing” for the economy at the same time, but many are skeptical of this claim…

Can the Federal Reserve navigate a narrow path and slay price inflation while steering the economy to a soft landing?

During an interview on CNBC Squawk Box, financial analyst Jim Grant expressed his doubts.

He compared Jerome Powell’s task to Captain Chelsey Sullenberger’s when he was forced to land a US Airways plane on the Hudson River after an inflight emergency, noting Powell is “no Sully.”

Grant went on to explain that even if things don’t look so bad right now, rivets are popping in the economy.

Yes, rivets are definitely popping, and things are only going to get worse in the months ahead.

But just like Joe Biden, officials at the Fed insist that everything is just fine.

In fact, the Federal Reserve says that Taylor Swift is boosting the U.S. economy all by herself.

Apparently her concert tour is so popular that it is greatly energizing the local economy at each stop.

Good for her.

But Taylor Swift is not going to save us from what is coming.

Neither is Joe Biden.

The truth is that the U.S. economy is already starting to come apart at the seams, and the layoffs that we have seen so far are just the tip of the iceberg.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office noted the debt crisis involving the California Employment Development Department’s (EDD) UI trust fund on July 7.

The state report was released following last week’s “May Fund Forecast” report by the EDD. It said that a temporary surcharge, which state businesses are currently paying to cover the agency’s multi-billion dollar debt to the federal government, may continue to be in place for some time.

The additional taxes being paid by employers will offset the $20 billion in federal loans taken by the state to cover UI benefit payments during the pandemic and related stimulus measures.

The money that California is using to pay claimants’ benefits, is already guaranteed by the feds, no matter what financial condition the EDD is in.

California is one of the two states that has remaining debt from the pandemic and accounts for 73 percent of that debt nationwide, with New York accounting for the rest.

According to California Globe, the EDD has been called one of the most mismanaged agencies in the state, with government insiders allegedly calling it “the place where state careers go to die.”

California Will Take Years to Pay Off Debt

The EDD said that even without the debt incurred from the state’s pandemic response, which is the cause of the latest insolvency and tax hike, California would still have had to borrow money over the next few years.

The report said this would continue even in a “good” economy and that the structural insolvency would need at least two to five years to fix.

“Historically, benefit payments have only exceeded contributions during major economic downturns—most recently, during the pandemic and Great Recession,” the EDD report said.

“For the first time, the fund is expected to be out of balance during a period of job growth.”

The EDD believes that the surcharge fee will now last about 15 years and not the six or seven years as originally projected in order to pay back the $20 billion borrowed from Washington.

California lost about $40 billion to unemployment fraud during the pandemic, most of which could have been prevented early on, with a state fraud prevention identity security system.  

However, the disgraced former labor department chief Julie Su, who was aware of the problem the whole time, waited months to install an anti-fraud system.

Taxpayers Paying for State Mismanagement

The EDD expects to take in about $5.3 billion in UI tax money over the next couple of years to pay off some of the debt.

The unpopular surcharge tax will cost each California employee about $1,500 over the next 15 years, with rates starting at $21 per employee and rising until it hits $420 a year until the federal loan is paid off.

The insurance department expects to pay out an extra $2.6 billion in benefits and overheads, which is more than it will receive in the next two years.

This will raise the amount the UI trust fund owes to its creditors from $17.6 billion to about $20.3 billion by the end of 2024, despite the extra $1.2 billion raised in extra taxes, according to the May report.

This includes interest, which was projected add an extra $300 million a year to the debt.

Rob Moutrie, a policy expert with the California Chamber of Commerce, told the California Globe, that his organization is “disappointed to see that California businesses will be paying an extra tax for even longer than expected.”

Moutrie said that California’s UI fund “was never intended to be used by the state as a society-wide social safety net” and that most other states made sure they were able to immediately pay off any pandemic debt they incurred.

It has been hoped by many advocates that this latest scandal will force a reform of the agency. But action may require additional UI taxes to address the issue, making it unpopular with the state’s politicians and the public.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.