A Foreign War's Impact on American Unemployment

• Author: Chris Remington
• Posted: 2024-12-05

According to Forbes, Investopedia, and other outlets, the beginning of March has witnessed a huge 5.1% boost in jobless claims.

This means that these are people who have freshly lost their jobs, as people re-filing would not be counted since they would be denied.

So, a 5% increase is a huge shot to the economic landscape, heard all around America and well beyond.

The current invasion of Ukraine by a hostile Russia bears an awful lot of blame here.

While the American government is the entity that decided to no longer purchase oil from Russia, the fact is that Russia's actions made it impossible for America to offer any sort of financing to a Putin regime bent on overthrowing another sovereign nation.

America is not blameless here, of course, as unemployment was on the rise long before Russia decided to invade Ukraine two weeks ago. In fact, the Biden administration has spent the last year covering up the damage of his own economy.

The bigger point is that every single day that this conflict is happening overseas, Americans are paying a higher price and more and more people are losing their jobs.

America has been deeply involved with Ukrainian politics since 2014, openly bragging on the floor of Congress about using Ukraine to fight a war against Russia "without American causalities," and spending billions to promote regime change in the area.

The point is that America cannot untie itself from Ukraine now, and so every bit of the war is going to inevitably hit the American economy and keep costing jobs.

Priced Out of Existence: The Hidden Victims

People are all over social media complaining about gas being well above $4 per gallon, even in rural areas and not in expensive cities. Though this is nothing new.

Since Joe Biden took office, people have been sounding the alarm about eggs going up literally over 500%, or most meats being now nearly 100% more expensive, and not to even mention bread, milk, etc.

This plays directly into a Ukraine-Russia conflict insofar as Russia no longer providing America with crude oil means that higher gas prices are inevitable.

This isn't some opinion about the matter. It's not a rumor on what to watch out for. It is quite literally from the mouth of President Biden, his Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and other politicians in Washington: Gas prices are going to go up, a lot! Some predict $10 per gallon in places like California, while the national average may be around $7 per gallon in only a few months.

The victims hidden from this are the mom 'n pop companies that can no longer afford the fuel needed to run. Small trucking businesses, demolition and moving services, etc. And that's not even getting started on small farms, who are paying over 300% more for fertilizer, most of which comes from Russia, and now isn't coming in at all. What happens to these farmers and the people they employ? They vanish. Not only do the jobs vanish for these Americans, but they vanish entirely as people as the mainstream media and politicians wanting your vote would never speak about their suffering in a million years. Instead, Biden stands atop a stage and proclaims that Americans suffering for a foreign, 2nd-world nation in the Eastern Bloc is the duty of all Americans. Maybe that holds some moral weight, but it doesn't make it at all easier for the millions of people who've lost their jobs in the two weeks since this conflict began.

The fact is that many have been priced entirely out of the market and are no longer employed. Now they're lining up to file jobless claims, which is an ironic twist for a Biden administration that leaned so heavily on low jobless claims as proof that his economy was booming. Now when someone brings up the fact that even his one strong selling point has turned belly-up, the typical response is to just draw that "democracy" card and claim that it's a good thing all this is happening, as it's helping Ukrainians.

If things keep up at this rate, some economic analysts suggest that America could be dealing with more unemployed people than at the height of the COVID pandemic, with the key difference being that these jobs weren't forced closed by the government but were rather forced close by artificially high prices due to shortages, barrel prices and a government refusing to do smart business.