The principle of British welfare is no longer that you can insure yourself against the risk of unemployment and receive unconditional payments if the disaster happens.
Twelve million people were unemployed, and conventional wisdom said the only thing to do was to ride it out, wait, and hope that things would turn around.
Now could we talk about the lecture programme at Downton? -If we must, we must, if only I wasn't haunted by those women whose jobs will be snatched from them when the boys come home.
The number was around 200,000 each week before the pandemic hit but because initial jobless claims have been decreasing weekly since late March, economists say that's a sign the employment picture isn't getting worse.
Analysts say America's decreasing COVID cases likely factored in here, so might have Holiday hiring and a government stimulus program that gave financial aid to people who weren't working also expired recently.