Happy Weekend!  Hope you all will enjoy spring weather, while here in the Cleveland area we have seen snow flurries for the last three days!  

Economics/Employment

• Pick your medium for info on the new unemployment claims figure yesterday from Yahoo Finance: Video, or an article on unemployment explaining “continuing claims”—which lags by one week.
• Have we bottomed out? (Will things stop getting worse, even if they don’t get better?) (Yahoo Finance)
• USA Today offered a Q&A deals with, among other things, the undesired outcome of expanded unemployment benefits: that those receiving unemployment benefits greater than their income won’t return to their jobs.
• And Fast Company takes a broader look future rehiring costs.
• Will our experience with working from home during this pandemic erase the myth that people can’t be as productive? (Cleveland.com)

Investing

• Wondering why the market isn’t down more, given the unemployment numbers and overall economic slowdown? Here is a simple explanation. (Irrelevant Investor)
• If you didn’t catch this on Monday, oil future prices went negative. This is a fascinating phenomenon and is explained in the first three minutes of this MarketPlace report.

Winners and Losers

• I’m not involved in too many conference calls or teaching remotely, yet even I spend lots of time on Zoom, from yoga classes to catching up with friends and family. Why did Zoom end up being the winner for virtual meetings? (Fast Company)
• I loved Publix when I lived in the South….here is one more reason on top of their fantastic subs to love them. They are buying up surplus food and milk from farmers and donated it to food banks. (NPR)
• Here is the latest on changing consumer spending:
  • From Visual Capitalist, a world view.
  • From USA Today, a domestic view, with largest swings.
  • And from the LA Times, a discussion of how long it might take for Consumer Spending to recover, if it ever does.

• A status update on those PPP loans coverage starts with a video on where they stood a week ago (CNBC), and is followed by an articles on the fallout and resultant measures, including tighter Treasury guidelines for PPP part 2, passed by Congress yesterday. (Forbes) (Politico) (The Hill)

Student Loans

• Changes to Federal Loans with provisions under the CARES act. (Student Loan Hero)

Higher Education

• What will the fall look like on college campuses? (Inside Higher Ed)

About the Author