It’s only the beginning.
The U.S. economy shed 701,000 jobs in March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, as the coronavirus rapidly spread across the country. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4%.
The figures are just a snapshot of the economic toll coronavirus is taking. The monthly jobs report comes after record weekly jobless claims, which have totaled 10 million over the past two weeks.
“The changes in these measures reflect the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and efforts to contain it,” the bureau wrote.
Food and bar establishments were especially hard hit as the hospitality industry saw 459,000 job losses, according to the report, which also mentioned “notable declines” in employment in retail, health care, construction, professional services, and social assistance.
Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, warned that because data was gathered three weeks ago, the true unemployment figures are actually “much worse.”
It may be jarring to see in the official numbers that the unemployment rate has risen from 3.5% to 4.4%
But the reality is much worse: My calculations suggest that in the ensuing three weeks since these numbers were collected, the unemployment rate has risen to 13%.
— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) April 3, 2020
That’s why the Labor Department had reported a record-breaking 3.3 jobless claims in the week ending on March 21, only for that figure to get eclipsed the following week with a staggering 6.6 million claims.
The steep plunge in employment marks the end of an almost decade-long run of job creation.
Be careful reading too much into this. The survey period is the week that includes the 12th of the month. So it doesn’t include the big jumps in unemployment we’ve seen the last couple of weeks. The May number will be really ugly.
Details here
It’s the stupid, economy.
And the experts were predicting 100,000/3.8
Some “experts”
I don’t understand this. If 10 million new unemployment claims have been filed in the past 2 weeks, how is that reconciled with 700,00 jobs lost? Perhaps, I’ll just file that among questions like why the DOW rises each time a report of new claims happens? I’m not an economist but I’m certainly not the dullest knife in the drawer. I guess I’ll just have to keep reading.
Here’s the full report:
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
There’s little good news in it anywhere. If you look past the headline, you can also see that:
-The number of unemployed persons who reported being on temporary layoff more than
doubled in March to 1.8 million.
-The number of unemployed persons who were jobless less than 5 weeks increased by
1.5 million in March to 3.5 million.
-The labor force participation rate, at 62.7 percent, decreased by 0.7 percentage
point over the month.
-The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for January was revised down by
59,000 from +273,000 to +214,000.
So, in addition to the 701 thousand jobs lost last month, millions more were pushed to the brink. I have a feeling April’s job report will be far, far worse. We’ve only just begun here folks.