Jobless claims at lowest since Nov.
Unemployment benefit claims fall to 712K, as pace of layoffs eases.
The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to 712,000, the lowest total since early November, evidence that fewer employers are cutting jobs amid a decline in confirmed coronavirus cases and signs of an improving economy.
The Labor Department said Thursday that applications for unemployment aid dropped by 42,000 from 754,000 the week before. Though the job market has been slowly strengthening, many businesses remain under pressure, and 9.6 million jobs remain lost to the pandemic that flattened the economy 12 months ago.
In February, U.S. employers added a robust 379,000 jobs, the most since October, reflecting an economy in which consumers are spending more and states and cities are easing business restrictions. Thursday’s figure, though the lowest weekly figure in four months, showed that weekly applications for jobless benefits still remain high by historical standards: Before the viral outbreak, they had never topped 700,000, even during the Great Recession.
All told, 4.1 million Americans are receiving traditional state unemployment benefits. Counting supplemental federal unemployment programs that were established to soften the economic damage from the virus, an estimated 20.1 million people are collecting some form of jobless aid.
The continuing job cuts reflect the extent to which the pandemic disrupted normal economic activity and kept consumers hunkered down at home rather than out traveling, shopping, dining out and attending entertainment venues. Cities and states restricted the hours and capacity of restaurants, bars and other businesses. Even where restrictions didn’t exist, many Americans for months chose to stay home to avoid the risk of infection.
Now, though, as vaccinations are increasingly administered around the country, business limitations are gradually eased and consumers grow more comfortable engaging face to face with others, optimism about the economy is rising. Last month, consumers bounced back from months of retrenchment to step up their spending by 2.4% — the sharpest increase in seven months and a sign that the economy may be poised to sustain a recovery.
In the meantime, the number of confirmed new COVID-19 cases has dropped to an average of around 50,000 a day from nearly 250,000 in early January.
John Pepper’s career is one for all to look up to. Attributing his success to a liberal arts education is a valuable plug for that branch of the education tree.
My personal journey in education and careers started from the opposite tact. A bachelor’s and master’s in engineering and science enabled a 40-plus-year career in science and technology. However, coming from an inferior high school education (my state ranked around 49th) didn’t help my enthusiasm for writing; in fact, I was petrified to write a paragraph much less a paper. As an engineering undergrad, I couldn’t understand why I should be writing a paper on Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” instead of completing the next update to my Heat Transfer program.
Later in life and career I learned, the hard way, why that was terribly shortsighted. I discovered that getting an engineering program approved and funded was two-thirds getting the math right and one-third (or more) communicating your idea, plan and benefits to your chain of command.
The more at stake, the greater the need to be able to clearly communicate. Much of that one-third (+) required those liberal arts skills I minimized in college. Playing catch-up to be adequate in writing and speaking was a hard but necessary self-improvement that allowed me to succeed technically.
As a supervisor of engineers and scientists, I spent much more time working with my folks on polishing their proposal presentations than correcting the technical aspects of their program. There is another wall for liberal arts majors to climb: Business schools. The expansion of undergrad business school curriculums and their graduates over the last 50-60 years has taken away positions and opportunities that liberal arts majors once filled.
I’m not blaming business schools. Modern corporations, competing globally, had a need for other business specialties than accounting and the business schools answered.
Liberal arts graduates have been fodder for MSM and student loan forgiveness advocates because of stories showcasing them working in retail and restaurant hourly jobs, stuck with enormous debt, and no way out.
Those stories suggest that for every John Pepper success there may be 100 minimum wage workers with BA diplomas. If true, then something should be done to better prepare liberal arts students for post-graduation.
Start with high school guidance and career counseling. Many high school students do not have a clear picture of what they want to do later in life. There are stories from those students of counselors and family telling them to just get into college and figure it out later.
The push to attend a four-year college over other options can defy common sense. This approach worked when tuition and living expenses were low, and high school college prep was more robust. Starting out in remedial courses, changing majors, and taking another year or two could be managed.
Today that time can cost you an extra $10,00$20,000. Dropping out because of debt or frustration compounds the problem, leading to a minimum wage job with a lot of debt.
Should students get a more realistic assessment of their ability to immediately do college-level work? Should more complete career counseling on their options and aptitude for majors be done? Are blended degree programs with liberal arts, business, and other employment-oriented programs practical?
Should universities have put two and two together early on? Is it a straight line from business schools’ success to opportunities for liberal arts students decreasing? If we had imagined that relationship a generation earlier, what changes in our education process could have been made that benefit both needs?
Universities working with industry leaders to define desirable, employable traits and skill sets can go a long way to defending liberal arts programs. In the end, if companies do not employ liberal arts students in professional positions, then liberal arts departments will continue to be marginalized.
Five Oklahoma City police officers were charged with first-degree manslaughter Wednesday after they shot and killed a 15-year-old boy who had dropped his gun on the ground, officials said.
The shooting came after the police had responded to a call for an armed robbery at the Okie Gas Express on Nov. 23. Before officers arrived, the clerk had fled the store and locked the teenager, Stavian Rodriguez, inside, according to the police.
Officers ordered Rodriguez to come out, and he climbed out a drive-through window, prosecutors said. Body-camera footage shows officers giving Rodriguez “varying commands,” prosecutors said.
Rodriguez lifted his shirt up and pulled a gun from his pants, holding it with his thumb and forefinger, prosecutors said. He dropped the gun on the ground and put his left hand in his back pocket and his right hand in his front pocket or waistline, prosecutors said.
One officer, Sarah Carli, fired a “less lethal” round at Rodriguez, striking him, prosecutors said. Five other officers then “unnecessarily” fired their guns at Rodriguez, striking him multiple times and killing him, prosecutors said.
Rodriguez had no weapons other than the gun, which he had dropped before being shot, prosecutors said. A cellphone was later found in the back pocket where his left hand had been, prosecutors said.
A medical examiner’s report showed that Rodriguez had been shot 13 times in the head, the chest and other parts of his body.
The five officers who fired lethal rounds and were charged in the death are Bethany Sears, Jared Barton, Corey Adams, John Skuta and Brad Pemberton. First-degree manslaughter carries a penalty of four years to life in prison, prosecutors said. Carli, who fired the “less lethal” round, was not charged, the police said.
Cameo Holland, Rodriguez’s mother, said Wednesday that the officers should go to prison for killing her son.
“The first thing that comes to mind is ‘Praise God,’ and I’m hopeful that they will be convicted,” she said. “The surprise is that the district attorney is willing to do the right thing and to charge all of them.”
Holland said there was no justification for the police to have shot her son. “I don’t defend what he did at the store or even him being there,” she said, “but nobody should expect to be killed for committing a crime — not robbery.”
She said the officers would now go through the criminal legal process, “something they denied my son the opportunity to do.”
It was not immediately clear if the officers who were charged had lawyers.
All five have been placed on paid administrative leave, according to the Oklahoma City Police Department.
John George, the president of the Oklahoma City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 123, which represents the city’s officers, said all five who had been charged had “acted within the law.”
“Officers must make life and death decisions in a split second, relying on their training,” George said.
Wyatt Cheatham, 17, who police say helped Rodriguez rob the gas station but was not there when he was shot, was charged in December with first-degree murder for taking part in a crime that led to Rodriguez’s death, court records show.
The charges against the officers came on the same day that the police released body-camera footage from the shooting that showed multiple officers surrounding the gas station with their guns drawn.
After Rodriguez crawled out of the drive-through window, officers yelled, “Hands!” “Get down!” “Face down on the ground” and “Drop it!” before opening fire, the videos show.
Last month, prosecutors charged another Oklahoma City police officer, Sgt. Clifford Holman, with manslaughter after he shot a Black man, Bennie Edwards, 60, three times in the back as he ran away in December.
Rand Eddy, a lawyer for Rodriguez’s family, said the family had begun the process of filing a lawsuit against the city in state court and planned to file a federal lawsuit against the city and the five officers who were charged with manslaughter.
Eddy called the criminal charges against the officers “a step toward justice.”