Thursday, July 2, 2020

Jobs report - some good (old) news, and some not-so-good (recent) news

Really good news on one side of the nation's job picture, and other news that wasn't good at all.

Let's start with the good news, as the late-Spring jobs recovery continued and sped up in June.
The nation's high unemployment rate dropped in June, falling to 11.1% from 13.3%, as more Americans went back to work. Some 4.8 million jobs were added, the U.S. Labor Department said Thursday.

Unemployment fell broadly, across demographic groups and levels of education, but remained in double-digits for all.

The leisure and hospitality sector led job gains, adding 2.1 million jobs as restaurants and bars across the country reopened. Retail generated 740,000 jobs, and education and health services added 568,000.
Good to hear, but let's not forget that even with 7.5 million jobs gained back in the last 2 months, that's still barely 1/3 of what we lost in the 2 months before that.


But there's another reason why regaining nearly 5 million jobs for "June" feels nearly irrelevant.


We already know there have been lots of COVID-related shutdowns and other layoffs in the 3 weeks since people and businesses were surveyed about their employment situation. So we're already facing serious headwinds, with a long way to go before we get even close to where we were in February.

Along those lines, I'll note the bad employment report from today, in the form of a 15th straight week of new unemployment claims in the 7 figures.
In the week ending June 27, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claimswas 1,427,000, a decrease of 55,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 2,000 from 1,480,000 to 1,482,000. The 4-week moving average was 1,503,750, a decrease of 117,500 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 500 from 1,620,750 to 1,621,250.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 13.2 percent for the week ending June 20, unchanged from the previous week's revised rate. The previous week's rate was revised down by 0.2 from 13.4 to 13.2 percent. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending June 20 was 19,290,000, an increase of 59,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised down by 291,000 from 19,522,000 to 19,231,000. The 4-week moving average was 19,854,000, a decrease of 494,500 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised down by 72,750 from 20,421,250 to 20,348,500.
And remember that the "insured employment" number only reflects the regular, state-based unemployment claims. It doesn't count the PUA program for gig workers or the extended unemployment benefits that go for people who have been filing for more than 13 weeks.

Put those numbers together, and we have the 6th straight week of more than 31 million people filing unemployment claims, with that number reaching exceeding 33 million in mid-June (the last week we have all of these numbers).

Again, those numbers are before we had the second wave of COVID-19 shutdowns, so it seems likely that any job growth will level off (at best) in July. And "leveling off" when you're down`14.6 million jobs and still have 11% unemployment is not good.

Even the national economics writers aren't buying TrumpWorld's laughable happy talk about the jobs market.


Because much like COVID-19, you're not going to wish our double-digit unemployment away through hopes and false confidence. No matter how much funny money gets pumped into our Bubbly stock market.
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