A professor and former Department of Labor economist is warning that unelected White House advisor and multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk is sending the United States headlong into a huge recession.
In a post on Bluesky, Jesse Rothstein, a University of California, Berkeley public policy professor who was the DOL’s chief economist at the start of the Obama administration, addressed the dire situation we could soon be facing.
“It seems almost unavoidable at this point,” Rothstein wrote, “that we are headed for a deep, deep recession.”
Between the hundreds of thousands of government jobs on the chopping block and the cancellations of countless federal contracts, the economist noted that upcoming employment reports are looking quite scary indeed.
“The March employment report (to be released April 4) seems certain to show bigger job losses than any month ever outside of a few in 2008-9 and 2020,” the professor wrote in his multi-post thread. “Add on to that enormous private market uncertainty — how could you hire in these conditions? […]
This process marks an entire realignment of the economy. It will demonstrate how intertwined the Government and government spending is with economic activity. The question will be: to what extent is productivity effected? It’s this measure that will show what these workers were actually doing. Always interesting will be the unintended effects these cuts bring. Just as when the nuclear weapons safety teams were let go, and there was a collective “Oops” from the administration with a scramble to re-hire the staff. Because these cuts are made in an unthinking fashion there will be many of these “Oops” moments. It will be interesting to see if Democrats can capitalize on and articulate the value these workers and contracts bring to communities across the country. It will be interesting, as well, to see if Democrats are willing to challenge the underlying relationships between worker and employer that have been cemented in place since Ronald Reagan. I doubt they are anywhere close to this brave. Think outside the box.