{"id":175862,"date":"2020-11-07T21:20:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-08T02:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/11\/07\/the-unemployment-rate-dropped-in-october\/"},"modified":"2020-11-07T21:20:00","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T02:20:00","slug":"the-unemployment-rate-dropped-in-october","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/11\/07\/the-unemployment-rate-dropped-in-october\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unemployment Rate Dropped in October"},"content":{"rendered":"

Down to 6.9%<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As always, I am a pessimist, and think that this largely an illusion, and possibly some politically rat-f%$#ery. <\/p>\n

Given the election, and the likelihood that Trump will spend the next 2\u00bd months wrecking the place, I do not expect this to improve. <\/p>\n

Also, a deeper dive into the numbers<\/a> reveals some very real problems: <\/p>\n

A better-than-expected October jobs report<\/a> was immediately met with warnings that the surge in COVID-19 cases in the US could eventually force parts of the economy back into partial lockdowns. <\/p>\n

That will apparently serve as the \u201cfine print\u201d on an otherwise solid report which showed the unemployment rate falling below 7%. <\/p>\n

As ever, it\u2019s important to look under the proverbial hood for evidence of the dreaded \u201cscarring\u201d effect that Jerome Powell (and other Fed officials) have consistently warned about since the onset of the pandemic. Jumping right in, long-term unemployment rose to 32.5% in October. That\u2019s up sharply from 19.1% in September.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

That figure has surged over the past two months. As Bloomberg\u2019s Katia Dmitrieva puts it, \u201cone-third of the unemployed haven\u2019t had a job since the first round of coronavirus layoffs in April.\u201d <\/p>\n

Each month, I look at permanent job losses. Think of it as the economic equivalent of fatalities in the pandemic. It\u2019s a macabre lagging indicator. <\/p>\n

In October, that figure was little changed, stuck at nearly 3.7 million, up 2.4 million from February.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Needless to say, a situation that finds 2.4 million more job losses classified as \u201cpermanent\u201d versus just eight months ago, argues for additional fiscal support. <\/p>\n

Also notable is the rise in persons employed part time for economic reasons. October\u2019s 383,000 increase was the first in five months.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

The unfortunate reality is that payrolls remain 10 million lower than they were pre-pandemic. There\u2019s (much) more work to be done. And surging COVID cases aren\u2019t going to make that work any easier.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am not the only won who thinks that we are in for the proverbial bumpy ride. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Down to 6.9%. As always, I am a pessimist, and think that this largely an illusion, and possibly some politically rat-f%$#ery. Given the election, and the likelihood that Trump will spend the next 2\u00bd months wrecking the place, I do not expect this to improve. Also, a deeper dive into the numbers reveals some very …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[450,458,494],"class_list":["post-175862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-employment","tag-recession","tag-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}