Right now, 26.3 million workers are either on unemployment or waiting to be approved for unemployment benefits. But for many of these jobless workers, the clock is running out on their eligibility to receive unemployment — and with no stimulus bill in sight, we could be entering a grim new phase of this recession. What will happen to the economy when unemployment insurance runs out? What will happen to the people who rely on those benefits? Economist Ioana Marinescu helps Nick and Goldy understand what the near-future of unemployment benefits looks like in the U.S.
Ioana Marinescu is an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She studies the labor market to craft policies that can enhance employment, productivity, and economic security.
Twitter: @mioana
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Further reading:
Emergency unemployment programs will expire at year’s end, putting millions at risk: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/business/emergency-unemployment-programs-will-expire-at-years-end-putting-millions-at-risk.html
Policy Basics: How many weeks of unemployment compensation are available?: https://www.cbpp.org/research/economy/policy-basics-how-many-weeks-of-unemployment-compensation-are-available
30 weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic and workers desperately need stimulus: https://www.epi.org/blog/30-weeks-in-to-the-covid-19-pandemic-and-workers-desperately-need-stimulus/
Unemployment insurance and job search behavior: http://www.marinescu.eu/publication/marinescu-unemployment-2020/
You can’t afford to live anywhere in the United States solely on unemployment insurance: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2020/09/10/490265/cant-afford-live-anywhere-united-states-solely-unemployment-insurance/
With millions of people out of work, the Senate’s inaction is not only cruel, it’s bad economics: https://www.epi.org/blog/with-millions-of-people-out-of-work-the-senates-inaction-is-not-only-cruel-its-bad-economics/
Scraping by on benefits and part-time work, but a cutoff looms at year’s end: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/business/scraping-by-on-benefits-and-part-time-work-but-a-cutoff-looms-at-years-end.html
How America gave up on fighting the pandemic and saving the economy: https://www.vox.com/21523204/coronavirus-unemployment-stimulus-economy
8 million have slipped into poverty since May as federal aid has dried up: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/us/politics/federal-aid-poverty-levels.html
Pelosi sends letter to Secretary Mnuchin on areas still awaiting responses from White House: https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/102920
Slowdown in jobs added means we could be years away from a full recovery: https://www.epi.org/press/slowdown-in-jobs-added-means-we-could-be-years-away-from-a-full-recovery/
Exclusive: America’s true unemployment rate: https://www.axios.com/americas-true-unemployment-rate-6e34decb-c274-4feb-a4af-ffac8cf5840d.html
Young workers hit hard by the Covid-19 economy: https://www.epi.org/publication/young-workers-covid-recession/
Website: https://pitchforkeconomics.com/
Twitter: @PitchforkEcon
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Nick Hanauer:
Department of Labor data suggests that 26.3 million workers are currently either on unemployment or are awaiting to get approved.
David Goldstein:
One of the things this crisis has exposed is how incredibly screwed up our current unemployment system is.
Ioana Marinescu:
Our unemployment crisis, certainly until June, was not a crisis of people not wanting to go back to work, but a crisis of jobs not being there.
Speaker 4:
From the home offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, the only podcast that dares to say that the con at the center of economics is costing us trillions.
Nick Hanauer:
I’m Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
David Goldstein:
I’m David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.
Nick Hanauer:
Today we have a really interesting conversation about what happens to the economy when unemployment benefits run out. The week of October 12th was the 32nd straight week the total initial unemployment claims were far greater than the worst week of Great Recession. And to give you a sense for how big this crisis might become, Department of Labor data suggests that 26.3 million workers are currently either on unemployment benefits or are awaiting to get approved. That’s a lot of people.
David Goldstein:
And of course, as is always the case in the United States, the impact of this pandemic and the recession it started has been disproportionate on people of color. The unemployment rate for white workers is 7%. Still high, especially considering we were at 3% total before the pandemic hit. But for black workers, it’s 12.1% and for Hispanic workers it’s 10.3%. And of course, that’s largely also because it has been disproportionate on low wage workers.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
David Goldstein:
And our low wage workers are disproportionately non-white.
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
David Goldstein:
So, I think, Nick, one of the things that this crisis has exposed is how incredibly screwed up our current system is and how mismatched it is to our modern economy. First of all, unemployment is run state by state with different degrees of willingness and efficiency, and we’ve seen a lot of people waiting for their benefits and a lot of fraud and abuse from systems that were overwhelmed by these claims. But normally, you would get 26 weeks of unemployment and then that would run out, and then situations where there’s high unemployment at the state level, then extensions kick in and federal contributions kick in. What we did with the CARES Act was add an additional 13 weeks of federally funded unemployment assistance along with that $600 a week, which ran out at the end of June. And unless Congress acts again, this is all going to run out by the end of the year. We will have millions of Americans out of work and out of benefits. It makes no sense.
Nick Hanauer:
It’s going turn a economic crisis into a political crisis, as if we don’t already have one. All of this is very serious. But today, we get to talk to an expert in it, the economist Ioana Marinescu from the University of Pennsylvania. She’s a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and she studies the labor market and policies that can enhance employment productivity and economic security. It should be really cool.
Ioana Marinescu:
So, I’m Ioana Marinescu. I’m an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice and I work on wage inequality and economic security, including topics like unemployment insurance and the universal basic income.
Nick Hanauer:
Ioana, can you first give us a kind of a quick overview of jobless workers’ current options for unemployment benefits and how well you think the system is currently working and covering people?
Ioana Marinescu:
So, right now, unemployed workers have different tiers. So, one of them is the traditional state unemployment benefits, which would happen at any point, whether it’s a recession or not. Then, you have people who normally would not be eligible, for example, gig workers, who are made eligible through a new program that the CARES Act implemented, and so they can also get unemployment benefits. Then, you have extensions in the duration of unemployment benefits, meaning normally for most states you get up to 26 weeks of benefits. If you’re unemployed longer than that, when the state unemployment is high enough, it triggers extensions of the duration of benefits, which can be about 10 to 15 extra weeks.
Then, the federal government also offers such extensions through the CARES Act, again, that come on top of the state extension. And then, until July, the CARES Act was giving $600 a week extra unemployment benefits and that ended at the end of July, but with Trump’s special measure, the Lost Wages Assistance, in most states people were still able to get about $300 instead of $600. And by now, this has also expired in about half of the states. And so, more or less, by the end of the year, we expect that most of this extra benefits will expire except perhaps the extended benefits that are triggered in states with high unemployment. So, in states where unemployment remains really high and for people who were eligible for unemployment insurance, if they’re still unemployed, they might still qualify for that, but only in states with high unemployment.
That’s the current landscape. Obviously, if there was a new stimulus bill, it could change. But right now, we’re looking by January to having most of the programs that are currently on the line expire, and so people will be getting much less help for their unemployment benefits.
Nick Hanauer:
So, what you described is actually an extraordinary extension of unemployment. We’ve never done anything like that. Of course, we do it, extend it in terms of weeks, but adding in the gig workers and that $600 a week, that’s unprecedented.
Ioana Marinescu:
Absolutely.
Nick Hanauer:
What was the impact on the economy?
Ioana Marinescu:
Right. So, this amount of benefits that people got indeed was incredibly generous compared to what we usually see, both in terms of new people becoming newly eligible and the extra $600 a week. What this did, first and foremost, was to support the economy so that people who lost their jobs, and there were many of those concentrated among lower income workers, were still able to pay the bills, get food for themselves and their families and so on and so forth. So, it had what we call a stimulus effect on the economy or the role of sustaining consumption, even when incomes dropped sharply because people have lost their jobs. And that’s the key reason why this was put into place, because so many people lost their jobs all of a sudden, bringing the economy to a very sharp stop.
And so, that’s what insurance is all about, to insure against such extreme events. In this case, it was particularly extreme. There’s always recessions, but this one was one of the fastest, deepest drops that we’ve seen in employment ever, especially in regards to how fast it happened because of the special circumstances of the epidemic. So, really, the main goal was to insure people so that they’re able to continue to consume and cover their basic housing and food expenses.
Now, of course, there is a concern regarding if this could have any adverse effects, and my own work and others… It’s a well-trodden topic in economics that generally, more generous unemployment insurance benefits leads to higher unemployment. And in my own work, we show that a key reason for that is that people search less hard for jobs so it takes them harder to find a job. They send fewer job applications. And what my research shows is that, in fact, even though people did decrease their applications somewhat as a result of all this, in the end, there were very few jobs. And so, the number of applications that each job was receiving was still very high and higher than before the crisis. So, in other terms, our unemployment crisis, certainly until June, was not a crisis of people not wanting to go back to work, but a crisis of jobs not being there.
And so, again, the key problem was that there weren’t enough job openings and not that people weren’t willing to go to those jobs. So, therefore, even if you reduce the number of applications a bit by each of these people, it’s still too many people looking for jobs compared to the number of available jobs. So, that’s basically the story right there, and therefore, the key fact, certainly up to the summer, that we’ve had from these unemployment benefits was mostly on the side of maintaining consumption, stimulating the economy, avoiding a deeper fall and also avoiding inequality, because most of those who lost their jobs are lower income individuals.
And it has been very successful at doing that without having any adverse effects on the labor market as far as employment or unemployment, at least until the summer, which is when, more or less, people have looked at all these effects. And it remain to be seen what would happen later, but certainly that’s, so far, what we can conclude from the research.
Nick Hanauer:
And let’s talk about later for a little bit. What kind of shitshow might we expect if we don’t extend unemployment benefits?
Ioana Marinescu:
Right. So, the immediate consequence of not extending them just linked to the immediate reason why they were there, is a deep increase in poverty and inequality because the people who are still unemployed… And even though the economy has recovered somewhat, we still are at the elevated rate of unemployment compared to what’s normal for this country. And so, these people who are unemployed will not easily find another job and therefore, they’ll be lower income and they’re face also [inaudible 00:11:07] economic difficulties. Again, this mostly touches lower income people, thereby increasing inequality and also adversely affecting the economy because these people not consuming means that there’s less demand for retail, restaurants, grocery shops, and therefore this businesses will be affected in their bottom line as well. So, that’s, therefore, a real concern to cut out so many people all of a sudden from this form of insurance that we were giving them during the crisis.
Nick Hanauer:
So, if unemployment benefits are not effectively re-established with a further stimulus, can you approximate how many Americans will be in deep doo-doo?
Ioana Marinescu:
Well, it’s hard to say exactly, and I haven’t made my own calculation. But, for example, if you read the press… And again, this is not my own calculation. It could be as many as 23 million people who might lose benefits [inaudible 00:12:12] all of this by January. So, that’s a pretty large contingent.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. So, a lot of people. And I think the thing that is really worth underscoring is the point that you were making, is that it’s not just those people that are suffering. I mean, obviously, those people pay rent and they buy groceries and so on and so forth. And so, you’re bringing to a halt a huge chunk of the economy.
Ioana Marinescu:
That’s right. Exactly.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
David Goldstein:
So, as far as I look at this, there’s really three separate things we did. One was extending unemployment, number of weeks. That is normal during a recession. Another, which is unprecedented, was extending it to people who normally don’t qualify. The self-employed, gig economy workers, etc., which seems like something that’s long overdue given the changing nature of employment. And the third was that extra $600 a week. $600 a week in parts of the country, that’s a lot of money. That’s, on its own, twice the federal minimum wage. Given what we’ve seen in terms of the success of these programs, have our unemployment benefits during normal times not been generous enough?
Ioana Marinescu:
Well, that’s a hard question, and I think it’s worth explaining here the logic behind the regular way that benefits are designed. So, why don’t we usually give benefits to gig workers, the self-employed and those who, by the way, are just on unstable employer… Employment with short hours. So, essentially… Let’s include the self-employed for a moment. But just gig worker people who are only have episodic income. The idea of insurance is that you have a regular job that’s the picture that you have in mind and then, from time to time, a big shock happens. It could be a big recession or just a shock to your own company or sector, and then we have unemployment insurance to allow you to kind of keep the income that you had before and unemployment insurance.
And maybe that’s a mistake and we should rethink that. But it’s basically designed for people who we call attached to the labor force, that normally they would be working, let’s say, at least a solid part-time or more for most of the year. And it’s not designed for workers who are doing sporadic jobs here and there. Similarly, with the self-employed, the tough part of that is that if you’re self-employed, there is no clear definition of job loss. What does it mean that you lost your job? It’s like maybe the business has dried out, but it’s kind of… Doesn’t correspond very well with the phenomemon of losing your job for a salaried worker.
And there might be reasons to question this design, but that’s fundamentally why it was designed this way, and I think because of the major crisis we’re seeing, at least [inaudible 00:15:14] in the short run, we’re going to overlook those conceptual issues and just try to cover more people who lost their jobs because of the pandemic.
Nick Hanauer:
So, this is an unemployment system that was designed for an economy that existed 50 years ago. It doesn’t seem well-suited to the economy that exists today.
Ioana Marinescu:
Right. But you have to understand that the idea of insurance…
Nick Hanauer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Ioana Marinescu:
And again, this is the basic Econ 101, is that you’re paying, right? A premium. Just think, for example, about your car insurance. Everybody pays in a premium and most people don’t have a car accident. But occasionally, you do and then the insurance pays out.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Ioana Marinescu:
So, the idea of an unemployment insurance is the same, which is people who are regularly employed pay a premium to this insurance. In fact, it’s not a premium. It’s a payroll tax, but that’s how we organize it. And then, if they happen to lose their job, which would be not most of them most of the time, then that fund will pay out. And so, the problem with people who are irregularly insured is that they may end up spending more time unemployed than employed and then [inaudible 00:16:28] their premiums aren’t going to cover the amount that they’re going to take out of this program.
So, therefore, while we might want to help these people economically, unemployment insurance might not be the right concept. Maybe we want something else, like, I don’t know, universal basic income or some other type of help, because insurance… The concept generally… Again, think of your car insurance, is you’re paying and usually bad stuff doesn’t happen. But every now and then, once in a while, it does and then your insurance covers it.
Nick Hanauer:
What other countries are doing this better than us? What are they doing?
Ioana Marinescu:
So, in Europe, they’re thinking also a lot about this and the OECD, for example, which the U.S. is also a part of, has done a lot of work in trying to think about this kind of portable rights, where whether you’re an employee or a gig worker, there would be a way that you could take with you from job to job some of the rights, for example, to unemployment insurance, sometimes to pensions. So, there are models out there to try to address these issues. But I don’t know of any country that has implemented these things on a grand scale.
And I will say that in the U.S., during the COVID crisis, they overwhelmingly relied on unemployment insurance rather than protecting jobs relative to European countries. That’s kind of very interesting, the choice that was made there. And so, I think that this brings this issue about, is that the right way to go, to the forefront, whereas, again, elsewhere… For example, in France, 50% of the workers were covered by a job retention scheme where essentially the government paid companies to keep them on.
Nick Hanauer:
What has this circumstance taught you mostly about the deficiencies of our existing system? And how would you fix it? How would you make it better?
Ioana Marinescu:
That’s a great question. So, I think one of the most obvious parts is that you realize that when such a major crisis hits, if we don’t do something, a lot of people are going to end up in dire straits in terms of not having enough income to count on to support themselves and their families. And so, in that sense, for the U.S., I think a big lesson is to see that there are substantial holes in our social protection system such that, again, for many individuals, if they find themselves being jobless, there just isn’t much that they can count on. And with the CARES Act, it has the right thing, right? CARES. [inaudible 00:19:01] addressing that and quite successfully, indeed.
And so, I think that that brings up the question of do we want to have a system like that, that is more similar to what many European countries have, a much more complete welfare state that covers [inaudible 00:19:18] everybody when they’re out of a job? Whereas in the U.S., the system is much more restrictive. There’s tight rules to qualify for unemployment benefits and if you don’t qualify for benefits, there’s not all that much else we can fall back on, especially if you don’t have children, right? So, if you don’t have children, so you can’t get most of the programs like EITC and welfare and so on, then you can only get food stamps. So, there’s not much, and so I think that that invites us to revisit the notion of the social welfare system that we have and how much economic security truly provides people in the face of a major crisis like the one that we have just experienced.
Nick Hanauer:
So, if it was up to you, what would you do?
Ioana Marinescu:
So, certainly one of the things that I would consider is universal basic income. This is not necessarily something that can be implemented on a short delays, but the key concept with that is that… By the way, this universal basic income is not meant to replace unemployment insurance because a universal basic income gives a minimum amount of income to everybody. But it might not be enough to get you through. If normally you have a middle class income, falling on the basic income wouldn’t provide you with enough insurance. So, we still need unemployment insurance.
But something like a basic income, a decent basic income, would allow economic security for everybody and not having all these categories of people who all of a sudden don’t have income and essentially have nothing to turn to. And so, a system like that that is the same for all and provides enough money to cover a minimum amount of basic needs is something that is potentially quite promising, especially for the U.S., because their social protection and the system is so spartan compared to what we have in the other OECD countries.
David Goldstein:
Yeah. Should we end, Nick, on our usual ending question?
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. So, we always ask our guests why do you do the work that you do? What draws you to it?
Ioana Marinescu:
Ha. That’s a great one. So, when I was growing up, I was really interested in history and politics and what drives the fate of mankind, and I felt like material conditions were really important and was interested in Marxist ideas. And I almost studied philosophy. I did my master’s in philosophy. I studied theories of justice, and so today I’m motivated to do work in economics that is… It’s not normative work. It’s positive work. Understanding what’s going on so that we are armed to make the world a better place.
Nick Hanauer:
That is an excellent and very precise answer. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Ioana Marinescu:
[inaudible 00:22:18]
Nick Hanauer:
That was really fantastic. Really fantastic. Well, Ioana, thank you so much for spending the time with us, and best of luck on your research and your work.
Ioana Marinescu:
Absolutely.
Nick Hanauer:
It’s extraordinarily relevant today.
Ioana Marinescu:
Thank you so much for having me.
Nick Hanauer:
That was a fascinating conversation, Goldie. But what really kind of jumps into my head is that young workers have been hit especially hard by the COVID economy. Young workers, 16 to 24, already high unemployment rates, have jumped much higher, from 8.4% in the spring of 2019 to 24.4% in the spring of 2020.
David Goldstein:
Ugh. Those are the types of numbers, Nick, that bring pitchforks.
Nick Hanauer:
Exactly.
David Goldstein:
24.4% of young people unemployed?
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
David Goldstein:
You want to see people in the streets, you keep that up.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. Exactly.
Anonymous:
I am 26 years old. I moved out to Seattle eight years ago to go to the University of Washington and up until this year, I was working at Expedia. When COVID first hit, obviously working at Expedia and being in the travel industry, we were at the heart of seeing everything go wrong. Bookings started dropping and revenue started dropping. People started getting nervous. Throughout the year, as COVID became more and more well-known and the impact was being seen, every couple months there would be another round of layoffs. I went through probably four or five before I was finally in one of the rounds this summer.
When I found out I was going to be laid off, it was this weird mix of shock and the opposite of shock, where it just dawns on you that you knew it was coming. You knew it was likely. You thought it wouldn’t be you and then you realize it was, and it happened really quickly. It probably took a couple weeks to fully sink in, and this was a few months ago and I’m still… Almost still in shock.
I started getting unemployment in late August and it was a combination of receiving severance from Expedia and then after the appropriate waiting period… So, it’s about a week. I applied for unemployment through Washington state. After the fact, I didn’t even know at the time that there was additional COVID relief. It turns out that I only… From the timing of when I lost my job, I only qualified for two weeks of that COVID relief, so it’s an extra, I think, $300 per week. I only got two weeks of that before the budget ran out, and so now I’m back on just normal state unemployment. And for the few weeks that there was the COVID relief on top of normal unemployment, I was covering my bills and it was a huge relief to have access to that. I didn’t know it was possible to be able to receive funding and not be terrified about lapsing on all of your bills.
I would say that it definitely is helping a lot and I’m not having to completely crush my savings. But I am losing it in February and that is something that I’m very, very nervous for. I have no idea what I’m going to do when it runs out and if there isn’t further funding. I’m trying to plan for it now. I know… I know the exact date I’m going to stop receiving unemployment and I have cut my expenditures by 60% at least. As far as what I’m actually going to do, I’m still looking for work, but it’s not going well. My job search has been demoralizing, depressing, debilitating. I don’t know how many other D synonyms I could find for how hard it’s been.
And I entered the workforce… I have a strong resume. I’ve been a high performer, strong references. And I have that in my pocket, and even still, I’ve been looking since August. It’s November now. I’ve had one interview and it’s truly demoralizing every morning, waking up to rejection emails from companies that were reaching out to me a year ago for the very same role, wanting to interview me. So, I’ve been in the workforce for four or five years out of college, and even now, applying to roles that are clearly meant for 22-year-olds post-grad. Even those, they have people with Ph.D’s applying for. So, it’s… Even if you do get a job, it’s going to be probably significantly less appropriate for your career path than it was a year ago.
I think what I can safely assume for everybody else who’s on unemployment and looking for work right now is that they’re probably struggling with how demoralizing the market is, like myself. I’m sure that they are struggling with the unknown, the fear of the future. They also know when their unemployment date runs out and they’re trying to make a plan as well. And I would hope that the lawmakers keep this in mind, these experiences in mind, as they are deciding whether or not to extend unemployment, because come February for me and for a lot of people before that, we’re going to be deciding can we afford to make rent? Can we afford to keep getting insurance? We’re going to be deciding what we can and cannot afford.
If I was being asked questions about where I’m at a year ago, I would want to tie all of this up with something positive and bright and cheery, and it almost doesn’t feel genuine because it has been so hard for so long and I anticipate it to continue being difficult, and I just want to urge people who aren’t facing this firsthand to check on your friends and to check on your relatives who are going through this, because it’s unprecedented. It’s scary. It’s a gut punch to your mental health. So, check on the people around you who are facing a really big unknown right now.
Nick Hanauer:
One of the things that Ioana brought up was that the unemployment insurance that we’re paying right now may, at the margin, be having some kind of disincentive effect on people seeking jobs. But there are so many million fewer jobs than people seeking them that it has no real effect on the economy. The labor market is still more than 12 million jobs below where it would be if the recession hadn’t happened and job growth is slowing, by the way. So, we have this giant mismatch between the number of jobs available and all the people who are seeking them.
David Goldstein:
And to put some perspective on that, before the pandemic hit, we had an economy in which there were more job openings than there were job seekers.
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
David Goldstein:
And that was beginning, in some sectors, to put some upward pressure on wages. And now, of course, we have millions more job seekers than we have jobs.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
David Goldstein:
And so, it’s not only creating massive unemployment. It’s also pushing down wages again.
Nick Hanauer:
And it’s worth noting that the $600… There’s no place in the United States where you can raise a family on the unemployment benefits people are currently getting. I mean, to be clear, it’s better than nothing.
David Goldstein:
Right.
Nick Hanauer:
But you’re not living the high life.
David Goldstein:
No. The normal unemployment benefits is the poverty income, but even the $600 a week… As we’ve shown, that’s like a $15 minimum wage. It’s not enough to support a family.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
David Goldstein:
You can’t pay rent and support a family on that. So, people are not rolling in dough, even if in some cases they’re making more money than they ever did because we haven’t raised the minimum wage in over a decade. And to be clear, the labor market is still more than 12 million jobs below where it would be if the recession hadn’t happened, and job growth is slowing.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. Let’s absolutely hope that the Congress of the United States can get its act together to do something to help out the folks who are going to be in dire straits here in the next couple of months.
David Goldstein:
The U.S. judiciary permitting.
Nick Hanauer:
Yes.
David Goldstein:
[crosstalk 00:31:41] Biden administration and a Democratic Congress can get to work and immediately extend the CARES Act.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. That’s right.
David Goldstein:
So, Nick, you know what next week is?
Nick Hanauer:
It is the 100th episode, which is amazing.
David Goldstein:
That is amazing. I can’t believe it. It feels… I don’t feel… The podcast doesn’t feel a day over 99.
Nick Hanauer:
Indeed.
David Goldstein:
And so, to celebrate the 100th episode, we’re going to do something special, so stay tuned, Pitchfork listeners.
Speaker 4:
Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on Twitter and Facebook at Civic Action and Nick Hanauer. Follow our writing on Medium at Civic Skunk Works and peek behind the podcast scenes on Instagram at Pitchfork Economics. As always, from our team at Civic Ventures, thanks for listening. See you next week.