As an EU citizen, this sounds utterly horrifying to me. How can the US have that little protection of their workers..?
There is the federal WARN Act (1) but it has holes big enough to drive a train through (natural disaster and unforeseeable circumstance exclusions mean it doesn't apply right now).
As the sibling noted, potentially the most devastating impact of the jobless claims is loss of medical insurance. We'll likely see tens of thousands of personal bankruptcy filings as a result of this pandemic, many of which will be due to ER/ICU bills.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...
I also know that people can use COBRA to keep their employer's insurance if they're laid off, but often this can be too expensive. But are they able to get a new insurance plan or do they just not have insurance if they don't keep their employer's insurance?
I get it that people will have other medical issues during this time. But whether it covers Coronavirus related-expenses makes a HUGE difference. Coronavirus is BY FAR the leading cause of hospitalization in the US right now. It's also the leading cause of death. For a month, it's likely to get exponentially worse. It's likely to remain this bad for 2-3 months minimum.
Meaning, the costs could be astronomical, and as you pointed out, would DESTROY people not covered by insurance. This could honestly be almost as bad as the Subprime housing crisis. Something like 800k people filed bankruptcy from Subprime. Conservatively, we're likely to see 500k semi-severe hospitalizations. If 30% of them are unemployed, I don't know how that doesn't lead to 150k bankruptcies.
YMMV, but I would say that's on the conservative side.
Plus, my personal experience is that we easily found many OK candidates in the US but had trouble finding one in the EU. That either suggests that the EU has less skilled coders overall, or that the US has a higher rate of people who are unemployed or very unhappy with their current job.
Did you cherry-pick that one? Spain @ 14.2%, Italy @9.7%, France @8.5%. Spain was actually at 26.2% back in March 2013.
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_...
You can easily find dozens of countries with at will employment, and high unemployment.
And I think, Spain has actually less stringent worker protection laws than Germany.
No, not at all
The US has spent the last 65 years chipping away at unionization rates and other pro-employee protections. The overall rate of unionization in the US peaked in 1954 [1].
[1] http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2011/0311reuss2.html
Better mobility and ability to create and destroy has costs and benefits.
And even worse again is that healthcare is tied up to your employer..
https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcra...
The metal levels indicate what portion of your expected healthcare costs the insurance is expected to pay. Bronze is 60%, Silver is 70%, Gold is 80%. At the bottom you will see age rating, so you have to multiply that factor with the premium to get the premium at your age.
For example, if you purchase bronze coverage (lets say $250) as a 50 year old in NJ, the factor is 1.78 times $250 = $445 per month divided by 0.6 due to it being bronze = $742 per month is your expected healthcare expenses.
Obviously this is not per month, but becomes more accurate amortized over ones' lifetime, as you might go with zero healthcare expenses for years and then get hit with $10,000 easily.
Bottom line is eat right, exercise, and either be poor enough to get taxpayer paid healthcare or be rich enough to not care about spending ~$20k per year per couple in their 50s on health insurance premiums plus have ~$30k or so ready for out of pocket costs in case of emergency. If something happens to you at the end of December, the out of pocket will reset Jan 1, so you need to have two years worth of out of pocket costs, and at around $13k or so, I ballpark it at $30k.
If I'm in the middle 30% to 80% wealth band of the US, I would plan on killing myself if my prognosis was poor to avoid draining the family's wealth.
EDIT: Follow-up question, the table ends at 64+, how do senior citizens pay for this without having a job?
But over the years, even that has been chipped down and is extremely confusing, with a combination of means testing and supplementary insurance programs that you need to buy to get "full coverage".
But basically, 65+ means if you go to the hospital, and get a $300k bill, it won't ruin your finances as the government picks up the hospital bills. I'm pretty sure. But there's Part A/B/C/D/etc, which cover different things like prescription medicines, non hospital healthcare, etc that are not paid for or partially paid for, and you have to buy supplementary insurance for those.
Also, health insurance in the US is not just insurance, it's also buying access to a set of healthcare providers that the insurance has negotiated pricing with, so that you don't get taken advantage of by the healthcare providers who can otherwise charge you whatever they want.
As you can see, the US spends a decent portion of its time trying to figure out how to take advantage of the system (i.e. each other) and wring out as much as possible while putting in as little as possible.
I've been doing it for 12 years. This isn't 'recent'.
People whose employers offered health insurance got to pay their premiums with pre tax money and contribute to HSA with pre tax money.
People whose employers don’t offer health insurance have to pay the premiums with post tax money. But they still get to contribute to HSA with pre tax money.
But in practice, it's so prohibitively expensive that many people just...don't. Pre or post tax, it's insanely expensive. Europeans would be shocked.
You know, it's probably not that a large problem because those are very few people, but this one is completely insane. I have no idea how nobody still found it completely opposite to fundamental freedoms. It just escapes being outright slavery because those people can run away to their home country.
Would a person getting that treatment from you quit for a job where 10% of people got fired after the first month?
However, things can go too far in the other direction. Imagine a small business having to spend months and months trying to fire someone who isn't doing their job and hasn't been receptive towards coaching or critiques. This could seriously harm the team they work on, not to mention the overall health of the company.
I don't know what the best solution is. But there are some complexities here.
Thinking about it more, I suppose I've also had this implicit assumption that at-will employment has contributed to the disproportionate success of startups in America. It seems like it could be the case, but I don't have any hard evidence.
"At-will employment" might be a US legal concept, but it's everywhere in Asia.
A few first-world economies (like Singapore, where I'm at; perhaps Hong Kong too) have similar (or less) employment protection to keep their reputations as "business-friendly" countries.
The implied "why" would be a more fluid workforce. We've all heard the horror stories of companies/industries/nations paralyzed by an unmotivated/unproductive workforce. Hell, we have the same jokes here about jobs in some government agencies and big corporations.
The thought is "quick to hire, quick to fire".
I don't mind it; I just think the situation where you lose your job AND your health care is insane.
I'd like a stronger social safety net.
On the other hand, perhaps countries with a stronger social safety net make it harder for companies to fire, so they push the burden back on the companies to keep from stressing social services.