US employment: temporary shock vs permanent damage

Despite the very brutal shock to the labour market, US households do not appear to be extremely depressed. Two reasons explain their relatively sanguine state of mind. First, those who have lost their jobs have received decent financial compensation. Second, most of them hope to be called back to work by their respective employers fairly soon. Two pitfalls are now looming. The first is that unemployment benefits will be significantly reduced in the upcoming fiscal package. The se...