Employment Jumps 2.5 Million in May, as Unemployment Falls to 13.3 Percent
By DEAN BAKER
Seventy-three percent of the unemployed report being on temporary layoffs.
The May jobs numbers were considerably better than most analysts had expected with the economy reportedly adding 2,509,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate fell by 1.4 percentage points to 13.3 percent. This improved labor market picture should not have been surprising since many businesses across the country had reopened by the survey week in mid-April. The high number of unemployment insurance claims, continuing through May, likely gave a wrong picture, as delays in processing caused claims to appear much later than they had been filed.
The job growth was widespread across sectors but was nowhere close to being proportionate to earlier losses. Restaurants accounted for more than half of the job growth, adding 1,370,600 jobs, but employment in the sector is still down by 36.6 percent from year-ago levels. Health care added 312,400 jobs in May, but employment is still down by 6.0 percent from year-ago levels. This is the result of people deferring nonessential procedures. Employment in dentists’ offices is down by 29.8 percent from year-ago levels.
Both construction and manufacturing showed huge job growth in May, adding 464,000 and 225,000 jobs, respectively. Employment in these sectors is down 5.8 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively over the last year. The relatively strong construction employment data is consistent with data on April construction levels, which showed a limited falloff in most categories of construction. An encouraging note on manufacturing is the one-month diffusion index, which shows the percentage of industries planning to increase employment, was 70.4 in May. (It was 60.4 for the overall economy.)
Retail added 367,800 jobs in May, but employment was still 12.5 percent below year-ago levels. Department stores have been especially hard hit with employment down by 21.2 percent over the last year. By contrast, employment at online retailers is down by just 6.9 percent since May 2019.
Some industries continued to be big job losers. Airlines laid off 50,300 workers in May, employment is now 23.4 percent below year-ago levels. The motion picture industry shed another 10,700 jobs, leaving employment 51.1 percent lower than May 2019. Hotels lost 148,200 jobs, with employment down 50.4 percent from last May. City transit employment rose by 10,100 but is still 34.1 percent below year-ago levels.
State and local government employment fell by another 571,000. It is now 1,571,000 below February levels. With these governments facing massive budget shortfalls due to the shutdowns, another large round of layoffs is a virtual certainty if Congress does not appropriate a large rescue package. This will be a huge drag on the recovery, especially since these governments will need to be hiring large numbers of testers and trackers if businesses are to be able to operate safely.
One encouraging sign was a drop in average weekly hours in manufacturing of 4.2 percent from year-ago levels. This indicates employers are cutting hours rather than laying off workers. This drop translates into hundreds of thousands of additional jobs in the sector.
The wage data show a sharp year-over-year rise, but this is due to composition effects (lower-paid workers have lost their jobs), so it is best ignored.
As noted, the data in the household survey was somewhat better than had generally been expected. It is important to note that the Bureau of Labor Statistics warns that many people who were laid off without pay were wrongly counted as employed. If these people had been counted correctly, the unemployment rate would have been roughly 16.3 percent. In April, this error had lowered the reported unemployment rate by roughly 5.0 percentage points.
The rise in unemployment has differed sharply among demographic groups. The unemployment rate for women over 20 is up by 10.8 percentage points from February, compared to an increase of 8.3 percentage points among men. This reflects the large contraction in employment in sectors that disproportionately employ women, such as restaurants and hotels. The unemployment rate for Blacks and Hispanics of all ages rose by 11.0 and 13.2 percentage points, respectively. This compares to an increase of 9.3 percentage points in the unemployment rate for Whites. The gaps almost certainly would have been larger if so many Black and Hispanic workers had not been classified as essential. While the 12.4 percent May unemployment rate for Whites is far above any prior peak (except April), the 16.8 percent rate for Blacks is far below the peak of 21.2 percent hit in January of 1983.
One very positive sign is that the vast majority of unemployed workers, 73.0 percent, report being on temporary layoffs. This group typically accounts for around 10.0-14.0 percent of the unemployed. Obviously, many of these layoffs will turn out to be permanent, but it seems likely that a large share of the unemployed will be able to go back to their jobs.
[Graph]
It is hard to see a 13.3 percent unemployment rate as positive, but it does support the view of the economy facing a severe recession, as opposed to a complete collapse. This is consistent with data showing that construction and home buying remain healthy and new orders for capital equipment have not fallen through the floor.
The improvement from April really should not have been surprising, since we should have expected more people to be working when it was legal to work than when it was not, due to the shutdown. However, we are still looking at unemployment that is far worse than the Great Recession and the recovery will be seriously impaired by more layoffs in the state and local government sectors unless there is a large rescue package.
The UK government are only doing this now, literally only doing this now! After the deaths of all those frontline workers…
CGTN @CGTNOfficial
Health Secretary Matt Hancock announces new guidance will come into force for National Health Service staff in England on 15 June which will require all staff to wear surgical masks
The percentage of coronavirus cases ending in death in Britain is an astonishing and tragic 14.2, but this is not an accident rather the result of policy and policy neglect. This indicates a serious problem with the social-political British state.
Anne
I’m always suspicious of the U3 number, especially so now with the assistance packages, and perhaps many hesitant to go back to work due the virus threat. I’m going to go in search of a current E/P for a most recent — https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/employment-population-ratio.htm — Looks like was as low as 51-52%; may have gone up 1 or 2%? A current U6 may be a few days away.
That Sweden, a country of 10 million now has more coronavirus deaths than China with 1.44 billion strikes me as calling into question the social ethic of Sweden. The percentage of coronavirus cases ending in death in Sweden is a startling and saddening 10.8. What actually is social democracy in Sweden, anyway?
Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers. *
* Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.
Reflecting on early modelling: perhaps the obsession with deaths missed the larger issue: post-covid health complications. As an ICU doc told me, she’s less worried about # of beds & ventilators & more concerned about healthy people having long-term problems like lung damage.
Reflecting on early modelling: perhaps the obsession with deaths missed the larger issue: post-covid health complications. As an ICU doc told me, she’s less worried about # of beds & ventilators & more concerned about healthy people having long-term problems like lung damage.
Ditto on the injury, damage, denigration caused to the human body by Covid-19. It is something which may be apparent or arise later and after beating Covid. In Michigan the death rate is approximately 1 of every eleven (approximate) cases of Covid which should be pointed out. (However) No one is discussing the resulting issues which may arise from contracting Covid. The current thinking by many and especially the young is this is an older people’s problem as we (the young) can survive Covid. The damage will last a life time and potentially cripple them. The older people like myself will simply die if we contract Covid and after an almost full life. This illusion of surviving gives rise to demanding a premature opening of the economy and unsafe practices of no masks and close proximity. In the store where we shop, it is mostly the young (anecdotally speaking) who are there sans masks and we distance ourselves from them.
Oh, to be invincible (in my mind) once again! This is why the young are sent to war.
* Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total
employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian
labor force plus all marginally attached workers; age 16 and over.
At least to judge by test results, the US, unlike the Europeans, appears to have given up on sustained COVID-19 containment. Consistent with the numbers for mortality too. @GregDaco via @SoberLookpic.twitter.com/kQIHHdvWK9
At least to judge by test results, the US, unlike the Europeans, appears to have given up on sustained COVID-19 containment. Consistent with the numbers for mortality too.
Not sure if we have given up or are just ignoring it. Until someone of authority or higher up dies, we will stay status quo which is why trump needs to be infected. If he was truly taking hydroxychloroquine, he might have tested positive. In my last post (Marshmallow), I cited NewDealdemocrat’s comment which is similar to Adam Tooze’s
As Angry Bear’s NewDealdemocrat has also pointed out in his latest Coronavirus dashboard for June 2;” the US has accepted and settled into a depressing status quo” of 20,000 new coronavirus infections and 1,500 deaths each day as being the norm. Coronavirus dashboard for June 2: the US has settled into a depressing status quo
BEIJING — The average life expectancy of Chinese citizens rose from 77 years in 2018 to 77.3 years in 2019, according to statistics released by the Chinese National Health Commission on Saturday.
China saw a falling maternal mortality rate which dropped from 18.3 per 100,000 in 2018 to 17.8 per 100,000 in 2019, said the commission in an annual communique on China’s health development.
The infant mortality rate decreased from 6.1 per 1,000 in 2018 to 5.6 per 1,000 in 2019, the commission noted.
According to the communique, more medical care services are available across the country. By the end of 2019, the total number of healthcare institutions nationwide reached 1.01 million, providing over 8.8 million beds for patients.
Compared with the previous year, there were 1,345 more hospitals and 10,751 more community-level healthcare institutions in 2019, it added.
The number of hospital beds per 1,000 population increased from 6.03 in 2018 to 6.3 in 2019, said the commission.
By the end of 2019, the number of medical professionals in China had totaled nearly 13 million, an increase of 5.1 percent year-on-year, it noted.
Not sure if we have given up or are just ignoring [coronavirus infections].
[ This becomes a disturbing question, especially so since in China which has completely controlled the coronavirus outbreak precautions and monitoring are pervasive. As for complete control, infections in China have been limited to imported cases which are detected on entry testing and quarantined and treated. ]
Aha. I was pretty sure that claims about health effects of quarantine were bunk, but here it is from the people who really know https://t.co/P6tX7tPsMS
Trump’s pet theory about the fatal dangers of quarantine is very wrong
There’s little to no evidence that ‘deaths of despair’ track unemployment rates.
By Anne Case and Angus Deaton
Here’s another way to put it in perspective: Bureau of Labor Statistics says that if measured properly unemployment would be 16.3%. That’s far above Great Recession; how does it compare with Great Depression? Data from Millennial Historical Statistics 2/
The reason it doesn’t feel like the Great Depression is emergency relief, which has compensated many workers for lost wages. But almost all the relief will expire over the next 2 months 3/
This will cause great hardship and could cause a relapse in the economy too. Unfortunately, GOP opposition to further relief has been reinforced by 1 good month 4/
https://cepr.net/jobs-2020-06/
June 5, 2020
Employment Jumps 2.5 Million in May, as Unemployment Falls to 13.3 Percent
By DEAN BAKER
Seventy-three percent of the unemployed report being on temporary layoffs.
The May jobs numbers were considerably better than most analysts had expected with the economy reportedly adding 2,509,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate fell by 1.4 percentage points to 13.3 percent. This improved labor market picture should not have been surprising since many businesses across the country had reopened by the survey week in mid-April. The high number of unemployment insurance claims, continuing through May, likely gave a wrong picture, as delays in processing caused claims to appear much later than they had been filed.
The job growth was widespread across sectors but was nowhere close to being proportionate to earlier losses. Restaurants accounted for more than half of the job growth, adding 1,370,600 jobs, but employment in the sector is still down by 36.6 percent from year-ago levels. Health care added 312,400 jobs in May, but employment is still down by 6.0 percent from year-ago levels. This is the result of people deferring nonessential procedures. Employment in dentists’ offices is down by 29.8 percent from year-ago levels.
Both construction and manufacturing showed huge job growth in May, adding 464,000 and 225,000 jobs, respectively. Employment in these sectors is down 5.8 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively over the last year. The relatively strong construction employment data is consistent with data on April construction levels, which showed a limited falloff in most categories of construction. An encouraging note on manufacturing is the one-month diffusion index, which shows the percentage of industries planning to increase employment, was 70.4 in May. (It was 60.4 for the overall economy.)
Retail added 367,800 jobs in May, but employment was still 12.5 percent below year-ago levels. Department stores have been especially hard hit with employment down by 21.2 percent over the last year. By contrast, employment at online retailers is down by just 6.9 percent since May 2019.
Some industries continued to be big job losers. Airlines laid off 50,300 workers in May, employment is now 23.4 percent below year-ago levels. The motion picture industry shed another 10,700 jobs, leaving employment 51.1 percent lower than May 2019. Hotels lost 148,200 jobs, with employment down 50.4 percent from last May. City transit employment rose by 10,100 but is still 34.1 percent below year-ago levels.
State and local government employment fell by another 571,000. It is now 1,571,000 below February levels. With these governments facing massive budget shortfalls due to the shutdowns, another large round of layoffs is a virtual certainty if Congress does not appropriate a large rescue package. This will be a huge drag on the recovery, especially since these governments will need to be hiring large numbers of testers and trackers if businesses are to be able to operate safely.
One encouraging sign was a drop in average weekly hours in manufacturing of 4.2 percent from year-ago levels. This indicates employers are cutting hours rather than laying off workers. This drop translates into hundreds of thousands of additional jobs in the sector.
The wage data show a sharp year-over-year rise, but this is due to composition effects (lower-paid workers have lost their jobs), so it is best ignored.
As noted, the data in the household survey was somewhat better than had generally been expected. It is important to note that the Bureau of Labor Statistics warns that many people who were laid off without pay were wrongly counted as employed. If these people had been counted correctly, the unemployment rate would have been roughly 16.3 percent. In April, this error had lowered the reported unemployment rate by roughly 5.0 percentage points.
The rise in unemployment has differed sharply among demographic groups. The unemployment rate for women over 20 is up by 10.8 percentage points from February, compared to an increase of 8.3 percentage points among men. This reflects the large contraction in employment in sectors that disproportionately employ women, such as restaurants and hotels. The unemployment rate for Blacks and Hispanics of all ages rose by 11.0 and 13.2 percentage points, respectively. This compares to an increase of 9.3 percentage points in the unemployment rate for Whites. The gaps almost certainly would have been larger if so many Black and Hispanic workers had not been classified as essential. While the 12.4 percent May unemployment rate for Whites is far above any prior peak (except April), the 16.8 percent rate for Blacks is far below the peak of 21.2 percent hit in January of 1983.
One very positive sign is that the vast majority of unemployed workers, 73.0 percent, report being on temporary layoffs. This group typically accounts for around 10.0-14.0 percent of the unemployed. Obviously, many of these layoffs will turn out to be permanent, but it seems likely that a large share of the unemployed will be able to go back to their jobs.
[Graph]
It is hard to see a 13.3 percent unemployment rate as positive, but it does support the view of the economy facing a severe recession, as opposed to a complete collapse. This is consistent with data showing that construction and home buying remain healthy and new orders for capital equipment have not fallen through the floor.
The improvement from April really should not have been surprising, since we should have expected more people to be working when it was legal to work than when it was not, due to the shutdown. However, we are still looking at unemployment that is far worse than the Great Recession and the recovery will be seriously impaired by more layoffs in the state and local government sectors unless there is a large rescue package.
Tom Fowdy @Tom_Fowdy
The UK government are only doing this now, literally only doing this now! After the deaths of all those frontline workers…
CGTN @CGTNOfficial
Health Secretary Matt Hancock announces new guidance will come into force for National Health Service staff in England on 15 June which will require all staff to wear surgical masks
12:31 PM · Jun 5, 2020
The percentage of coronavirus cases ending in death in Britain is an astonishing and tragic 14.2, but this is not an accident rather the result of policy and policy neglect. This indicates a serious problem with the social-political British state.
June 5, 2020
Coronavirus
UK
Cases ( 283,311)
Deaths ( 40,261)
Anne
I’m always suspicious of the U3 number, especially so now with the assistance packages, and perhaps many hesitant to go back to work due the virus threat. I’m going to go in search of a current E/P for a most recent — https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/employment-population-ratio.htm — Looks like was as low as 51-52%; may have gone up 1 or 2%? A current U6 may be a few days away.
40million/160million is stil around 25%
June 5, 2020
Coronavirus (Deaths per million)
Belgium ( 826)
UK ( 593)
Spain ( 580)
Italy ( 559)
Sweden ( 460)
France ( 446)
Netherlands ( 351)
Ireland ( 337)
US ( 335)
Switzerland ( 222)
Canada ( 203)
Luxembourg ( 176)
Portugal ( 144)
Germany ( 105)
Denmark ( 101)
Austria ( 75)
Finland ( 58)
Norway ( 44)
Greece ( 17)
Japan ( 7)
India ( 5)
China ( 3)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ltFy
January 4, 2018
United States Employment-Population Ratio, * 2007-2018
* Employment age 25-54
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=r2H7
January 4, 2018
United States Employment-Population Ratio, * 2017-2018
* Employment age 25-54
June 5, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 1,936,099)
Deaths ( 110,698)
UK
Cases ( 283,311)
Deaths ( 40,261)
Sweden
Cases ( 42,939)
Deaths ( 4,639)
China
Cases ( 83,027)
Deaths ( 4,634)
That Sweden, a country of 10 million now has more coronavirus deaths than China with 1.44 billion strikes me as calling into question the social ethic of Sweden. The percentage of coronavirus cases ending in death in Sweden is a startling and saddening 10.8. What actually is social democracy in Sweden, anyway?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=rbgQ
January 4, 2018
Unemployment-Underemployment Rate, 2007-2018
Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers. *
* Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.
Devi Sridhar @devisridhar
Reflecting on early modelling: perhaps the obsession with deaths missed the larger issue: post-covid health complications. As an ICU doc told me, she’s less worried about # of beds & ventilators & more concerned about healthy people having long-term problems like lung damage.
1:10 PM · Jun 5, 2020
Anne:
Ditto on the injury, damage, denigration caused to the human body by Covid-19. It is something which may be apparent or arise later and after beating Covid. In Michigan the death rate is approximately 1 of every eleven (approximate) cases of Covid which should be pointed out. (However) No one is discussing the resulting issues which may arise from contracting Covid. The current thinking by many and especially the young is this is an older people’s problem as we (the young) can survive Covid. The damage will last a life time and potentially cripple them. The older people like myself will simply die if we contract Covid and after an almost full life. This illusion of surviving gives rise to demanding a premature opening of the economy and unsafe practices of no masks and close proximity. In the store where we shop, it is mostly the young (anecdotally speaking) who are there sans masks and we distance ourselves from them.
Oh, to be invincible (in my mind) once again! This is why the young are sent to war.
Hi Anne
Thanks for the link.
In re the U6 curve, there’s no Trump Bump that I can see.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=rbLc
January 4, 2018
Unemployment-Underemployment * rates, 2017-2018
* Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total
employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian
labor force plus all marginally attached workers; age 16 and over.
Adam Tooze @adam_tooze
At least to judge by test results, the US, unlike the Europeans, appears to have given up on sustained COVID-19 containment. Consistent with the numbers for mortality too.
[ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZxEGfcWsAEcXch?format=jpg&name=small ]
5:30 PM · Jun 5, 2020
anne:
Not sure if we have given up or are just ignoring it. Until someone of authority or higher up dies, we will stay status quo which is why trump needs to be infected. If he was truly taking hydroxychloroquine, he might have tested positive. In my last post (Marshmallow), I cited NewDealdemocrat’s comment which is similar to Adam Tooze’s
As Angry Bear’s NewDealdemocrat has also pointed out in his latest Coronavirus dashboard for June 2;” the US has accepted and settled into a depressing status quo” of 20,000 new coronavirus infections and 1,500 deaths each day as being the norm. Coronavirus dashboard for June 2: the US has settled into a depressing status quo
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-06/06/c_139119335.htm
June 6, 2020
Life expectancy of Chinese rises to 77.3 years
BEIJING — The average life expectancy of Chinese citizens rose from 77 years in 2018 to 77.3 years in 2019, according to statistics released by the Chinese National Health Commission on Saturday.
China saw a falling maternal mortality rate which dropped from 18.3 per 100,000 in 2018 to 17.8 per 100,000 in 2019, said the commission in an annual communique on China’s health development.
The infant mortality rate decreased from 6.1 per 1,000 in 2018 to 5.6 per 1,000 in 2019, the commission noted.
According to the communique, more medical care services are available across the country. By the end of 2019, the total number of healthcare institutions nationwide reached 1.01 million, providing over 8.8 million beds for patients.
Compared with the previous year, there were 1,345 more hospitals and 10,751 more community-level healthcare institutions in 2019, it added.
The number of hospital beds per 1,000 population increased from 6.03 in 2018 to 6.3 in 2019, said the commission.
By the end of 2019, the number of medical professionals in China had totaled nearly 13 million, an increase of 5.1 percent year-on-year, it noted.
Run:
Not sure if we have given up or are just ignoring [coronavirus infections].
[ This becomes a disturbing question, especially so since in China which has completely controlled the coronavirus outbreak precautions and monitoring are pervasive. As for complete control, infections in China have been limited to imported cases which are detected on entry testing and quarantined and treated. ]
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
Aha. I was pretty sure that claims about health effects of quarantine were bunk, but here it is from the people who really know
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/suicide-coronavirus-opioids-deaths-shutdown/2020/05/31/bf6ddd94-a060-11ea-81bb-c2f70f01034b_story.html
Trump’s pet theory about the fatal dangers of quarantine is very wrong
There’s little to no evidence that ‘deaths of despair’ track unemployment rates.
By Anne Case and Angus Deaton
10:18 AM · Jun 6, 2020
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
Putting yesterday’s job report in perspective: many people have put up some version of this chart 1/
[ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=rbSa ]
Here’s another way to put it in perspective: Bureau of Labor Statistics says that if measured properly unemployment would be 16.3%. That’s far above Great Recession; how does it compare with Great Depression? Data from Millennial Historical Statistics 2/
[ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZ1XDx-X0AAdi1D?format=png&name=small ]
The reason it doesn’t feel like the Great Depression is emergency relief, which has compensated many workers for lost wages. But almost all the relief will expire over the next 2 months 3/
This will cause great hardship and could cause a relapse in the economy too. Unfortunately, GOP opposition to further relief has been reinforced by 1 good month 4/