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U.S. payrolls rose by 4.8 million jobs in June as employers brought back furloughed workers.
Key caveat: This data was collected in mid-June, *before* the recent surge in cases. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/business/stock-market-today-coronavirus.html
Key caveat: This data was collected in mid-June, *before* the recent surge in cases. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/business/stock-market-today-coronavirus.html
Separate weekly data shows another 2.3 million people filed for unemployment insurance last week (1.4 million state and 800k+ PUA).
(Back to monthly data)
The unemployment rate fell to 11.1%. The "misclassification" issue that got so much attention last month was still there, but was smaller. Note that the rate would have fallen by *either* measure.
The unemployment rate fell to 11.1%. The "misclassification" issue that got so much attention last month was still there, but was smaller. Note that the rate would have fallen by *either* measure.
Note that the number of *permanent* job losses is rising even as furloughed workers are brought back.
We've now regained 7.5 million jobs in the past two months, which is significantly faster than many economists expected. But the hole is still deep: We're still nearly 15 million jobs below where we were in February.
You can see the big drop in the "not at work, other reasons" category here. Hard to tell how much of that is @BLS_gov successfully resolving the "misclassification" issue, vs. these workers simply getting back to their jobs. Either way, that confusing mess seems to be fading.
The diffusion index, a favorite measure for nerds everywhere, rose again to 75.2 in June. That means that far more industries are now adding jobs than are cutting them -- this isn't just a story of restaurants and retail stores bringing people back.
The jobs picture is complicated right now: 7.8 million unemployed workers got jobs last month. But layoffs remain elevated too: 3.8 million went from employed to unemployed, and 3.6 million left the labor force.
Another look at the temporary/permanent layoff issue: The official unemployment rate fell to 11.1%, but the decline is all in temporary layoffs ending. The "core" unemployment rate (as defined by @JedKolko in @UpshotNYT last month) is now nearly 6%.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/upshot/jobless-rate-misleading-virus.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/upshot/jobless-rate-misleading-virus.html
(Sorry this thread is bouncing around and starting/stopping so much today. Juggling this with trying to update my actual story.)
The unemployment rate fell across racial groups in June, but gains have not been equally shared. Unemployment rate for Black Americans has fallen by 1.3 percentage points since April. Unemployment rate for whites down 4.1 points.
More complicated story in education: Unemployment rates rose much more for less educated workers. Coming down faster too, but still *very* elevated. (16.6 percent for the least educated workers.)
The number of people working part-time because they can't find full time work fell sharply in June, which is slightly surprising given reports of companies bringing people back on limited schedules. But still as high as at the peak of the last recession.
In a similar vein, the full-time employment rate has rebounded a bit more slowly than the overall employment rate, but difference isn't dramatic.
One surprise in today's report was the (small) gain in state and local government jobs. Hard to see that lasting without federal support for states.
There were big job gains in retail and leisure/hospitality, two sectors hit especially hard by the first phase of the crisis. But "big" is relative here -- these sectors are nowhere close to filling in the gap.
