Sandy Hurricane

Introduction

Hurricane Sandy is the biggest and deadliest Atlantic storm in the history. Sandy was a Category 3 storm which killed at least 286 people across United States, Caribbean and Canada. Millions of people in United States are still struggling to return to normality. June 2013 report shows that the estimate damage has been over $68 Billion which is only lower than Hurricane Katrina. Because of the huge damage Hurricane Sandy caused, the United States media and government organizations nicknamed this hurricane as “Super Storm Sandy”.

Natural disasters like hurricanes may damage or destroy physical assets such as houses, factories, stores and public infrastructure. They will interrupt whole economic activity of the country.

It appears that Sandy will impose huge destruction of property. It is estimated that the loss of two days commercial activity affected 25 percent of economy of U.S. within a week, and initial estimate of the economic losses imposed by Sandy is about $35 to 45 billion.

Hurricane Sandy did not make its spots on GDP, perhaps not on the unemployment rate of the country and on nonfarm payrolls either, but surely it will be visible in economic data.

1.0 Economic Effects of Sandy

1.1 Displace or Unemployment

The super storm displaced over 150,000 workers which is more than enough to increase unemployment rate of United States from 7.9% to 8.0%. The 70,000 people lost their job in New Jersey and over 50,000 in New York. So unemployment rate in New Jersey may increase to 11% from its current 9.7% due to the effects of hurricane Sandy. While in New York City it might jump up to 9% from 8.7%.

1.2 Insurance Industry

Insurance industry loss is between $20 billion and $25 billion. Homeowners and businesses are seeking payouts on policies to help cover losses from Hurricane Sandy.

1.3 Stock Market

The super storm closed United States stock markets for two days and this is the second time in United States history that markets are closed unplanned due to weather, first occasion were in year 1888. Bond markets were also closed on Tuesday. Its estimates that banks