Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Life in the U.S. is increasingly divided into two realities — one in which things have almost never been better and another in which it’s hard to imagine them being worse.
Driving the news: Bankruptcies led more companies to announce job cuts last year than at any time in more than a decade, WSJ’s Aisha Al-Muslim reports (subscription), citing data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas.
Details: Despite the latest jobs report from the Labor Department showing the unemployment rate near a 50-year low, 2019 saw the third highest number of total layoffs in the decade, with nearly 600,000 people losing their jobs, a 10% increase over 2018.
- There were more job cuts related to bankruptcy in 2019 than in both 2008 and 2009, during the Great Recession.
- 2019 was the year the oft-invoked healthy American consumer carried the economy, but U.S. retailers announced 9,302 store closings, a 59% increase from 2018 and the highest number since Coresight Research began tracking the data in […]
Just having a job does not mean you are going to survive without help from the government as in the form of money and Medicaid, especially if your job does not pay well enough to meet your bills and to eat properly, not to mention to go to college to get a better education and thus a better job.