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NWSOFA Indivisible Fiscal and Economic Issue Team May Virtual Meeting
May 19, 2020 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
RSVP: https://act.indivisible.org/event/local-actions/152847/signup/?
NWSOFA Indivisible May Fiscal and Economic Issues Meeting
| When: | Tuesday, May 19, 7:00 PM |
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While our physical meetings were held in the northwest suburbs of Chicago from 2013 through February, we are now meeting virtually. This will be our 3rd virtual meeting. Shorter commuting time for all, but missing the Oreo’s and other snacks at the meetings and the beers after the meetings.
We continue to live in interesting times as over 55,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 and millions are filing new unemployment claims each week–over 26 million since the beginning of March. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) April employment report to be released May 8th should reflect much of those losses, although the May report to be issued in June will probably reflect a further decline. We will be discussing the information from the BLS at this virtual meeting.
To offset those job losses, federal, state, and local governments have enacted assistance programs–over $2 trillion at the federal level alone. These are designed to assist both people that have lost jobs and companies that have lost customers. We will update what assistance has been enacted and their forecast effect on the economy and the projected fiscal year (FY) 2020 and 2021 budget deficits.
We will also be discussing other economic releases and forecasts. We note that all forecasts are educated guesses and are dependent on the actions being taken by the various levels of government to reduce the harm of the virus and how the virus behaves. It looks like the number of new infections and deaths have started to level out. Hopefully the lifting of restrictions won’t lead to another increase in infections and deaths as this would likely lead to a reinstatement of restrictions.
Come join us online and contribute to these discussions.
NWSOFA posts copies of past meeting on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nwsofa
The March meeting videos should be up by sometime next week.