Good News!!

[Art]

The May job numbers are in. A bit over 2,500,000 jobs were added in May and the unemployment rate dropped to 13%. The increase was mostly furloughed workers going back to work. This caught everyone by surprise. It looks like this could be one of the shortest recessions on record (knock wood.)

[Art]

More good news: It looks like there could be a corona virus vaccine in September :icon_e_surprised: :icon_salut:.

Knock wood again.

[Roadkingtrax]

Unfortunately, the full affects of PPP loans are not fully known. Paying employers to retain employees is a bit of an artificial driver in the numbers.

Good to see that some are getting back to work.

[Art]

Unfortunately, the full affects of PPP loans are not fully known. Paying employers to retain employees is a bit of an artificial driver in the numbers.

Good to see that some are getting back to work.

Maybe it was. However the projections by the experts were 8,300,000 job losses in May and unemployment at 20%. This is a swing of over 10,000,000 jobs counting the estimates of what May was supposed to be like. This is great news regardless, and a total surprise to even the most optimistic pundits. 2,500,000 job losses would have been considered a success.

[Gun Smoke]

Yes, good news and things seem to be springing back.

While any improvement to jobs is great I'm still concerned about a "lag factor". Some jobs will not come back, some will change. Some people have not felt the full impact of loss of income yet and so on.

Will restaurants continue with social distancing? If so then seating and thus $ will be reduced. If seating is restored to before there will always be people who want to remain distant and not eat out. This would apply to many apps like sporting events, church attendance, school, etc, etc.

Trade with China will be and should be strained. We import far more than needed. Will more manufacturing jobs return to America? If so, quality will improve but so will the prices.

This is getting a little off-topic but still relates to jobs. I don't believe we should expect pre-COVID-19 job numbers any time soon. Also, too, some are still on unemployment compensation and enjoying it, especially with the stimulus money.

[bruce]

Wonderful! Have been thinking things were improving. Sincerely. bruce.

[Johnny P]

Was talking to the manager of our local Wally World, and he said his problem was getting employees to show up for work. He is short handed, but under management rules during Chinese flu the employee can't be terminated for not showing up for work. He can't hire new people as he if fully staffed, but come July they go back to old work policy. As always, you have some that take advantage of the situation.

[m1ashooter]

My company was considered essential by the county and we have been very busy from the beginning of April until today. I drive by restaurants every night and slowly I seen more cars in the lots. Tonight I thought they were packed with people. Now we need the energy sector to get back to work. The Saudi's and the Russians tried to destroy that sector.

[Roadkingtrax]

Whoops. A timely miscalculation...like suspiciously timely.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/05/may-2020-jobs-report-misclassification-error/%3foutputType=amp

When the U.S. government’s official jobs report for May came out on Friday, it included a note at the bottom saying there had been a major “error” indicating that the unemployment rate likely should be higher than the widely reported 13.3 percent rate.

The special note said that if this “misclassification error” had not occurred, the “overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,” meaning the unemployment rate would be about 16.3 percent for May. But that would still be an improvement from an unemployment rate of about 19.7 percent for April, applying the same standards.

[oscars]

In the Household Survey conducted by the BLS, one is considered employed if working one hour per week. The BLS under Janet Norwood was considered the gold standard in data integrity. Now, if the Trumpkins don’t like the data or numbers, off you go to Suitland and it’s god forsaken commute. Got to be under the influence of Kevin Hassett.

[dryheat]

So, I looked it up.
-“You can 100% discount the possibility that Trump got to the BLS. Not 98% discount, not 99.9% discount, but 100% discount,” tweeted Jason Furman, the former top economist for former president Barack Obama. “BLS has 2,400 career staff of enormous integrity and one political appointee with no scope to change this number.”-

About Kevin: Paul Krugman argued on his faculty website that the book[Dow 36,000] contained basic arithmetic errors and was "a very silly book" but regarded Hassett's role as co-author as a "youthful indiscretion."[17] Statistician and blogger Nate Silver described the book as "charlatanic" and suggested on empirical grounds that the authors had failed to notice that at the time of writing stock prices were "as overvalued as at literally any time in American history".[18]

Maybe Kevin had a vision of 2020.

1hr of work a week- My friends wife worked part time(3 days a week) at a Big Store hair salon. She tried several times to get unemployment and was turned down every time. I'm not sure why. Maybe it wasn't considered a "real job".