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August 7, 2020

Welcome to this edition of The Reader, a weekly roundup of Fortune stories and insights you need to know.

 

I'm Lance Lambert, Fortune's reporter focused on Congress's stimulus bill. 

 

Today, we learned the unemployment rate dropped from 11.1% in June to 10.2% in July, soundly beating consensus estimates.

 

But this means 16.4 million Americans are still out of work—three times the jobless levels pre-COVID-19. And Congress's enhanced $600 weekly unemployment benefits have just expired.

 

What will Congress do? Democratic and Republican leaders are set to meet today to discuss a broad stimulus bill, which would replace the previous unemployment benefits and include a second round of stimulus checks.

 

Read below for my reporting on where they stand.

Lance Lambert

Associate data editor, Fortune

 

P.S. Become a premium member and get access to Fortune Analytics, my weekly newsletter of business insights based on exclusive surveys and proprietary data.

MUST READ

‘A lot of progress’ made on enhanced unemployment extension, but ‘major disagreement’ is delaying it 

 

The two parties are finally making progress, including on replacing the expired $600 weekly enhanced unemployment benefits. They're still in disagreement, however, on funding for states and schools.

 

BY LANCE LAMBERT

AUGUST 7, 2020

MUST WATCH

The U.S. added 1.7M jobs in July

 

And the unemployment rate dropped to 10.2%.

Here's a peek at Fortune Analytics, our exclusive newsletter for Premium subscribers—written by Lance Lambert!—that brings you weekly business insights based on timely data analysis by our editorial team and exclusive polling. 

 

This week, we got an exclusive look at Salesforce's proprietary data to learn how the pandemic is impacting workers.

 

69%

• ... of U.S. workers say the pandemic will permanently change the nature of work in their own career. 

59%

• ... of U.S. remote workers say they miss going into the office. 63% say they've grown closer to their family during this time, and 67% are interested in incorporating more remote work post-pandemic. 

50% 

• ... of U.S workers say they're considering a career change given their current work situation. 49% want to work in a less volatile role or industry than the one they currently work in.

To get the full briefing, consider becoming a Fortune Premium subscriber. You'll also get access to all of our stories on the web and in print.

 

Your support makes our journalism possible. Thank you.

More essential reads

• ‘A strange power’: The secretive Presidential committee that could kneecap TikTok by Jeff John Roberts
• Sweden’s top virologist has a message on how to defeat coronavirus: Open schools and no masks by Bernhard Warner
• USDA identifies 14 of those mysterious seeds from China by Eamon Barrett
• A running list of companies that have filed for bankruptcy during the coronavirus pandemic by Lee Clifford, Phil Wahba, and Fortune editors
  

From the archives

“It's no secret that the government is borrowing huge sums of money. What may surprise you is how much of it is coming from the United States.

 

Rising domestic demand for U.S. debt allowed the government to sell more than $1.7 trillion of Treasurys during fiscal 2009. Those sales paid for billions of dollars of stimulus spending, without drawing unusually large contributions from overseas creditors such as China or triggering a long-feared interest rate spike.”

—Where does stimulus money come from? by Colin Barr, January 2010

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