Topline
The United States lost 140,000 jobs in December, according to data released by the Department of Labor on Friday – far worse than economists expected and marks the first monthly decline in employment since the epidemic millions of job losses in April.
People wait in for food at a distribution site at the Bronx-based church in New York City.
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Key facts
The unemployment rate remained flat at 6.7% in December, compared with November; the metric hit a record high of 14.7% in April.
There are now 10.7 million unemployed people in the United States, compared to 10.9 million in November, the government said.
The number of permanent job losses fell by 348,000 in December to around 3.3 million – about three times prepandemic levels.
In addition to the unexpected job losses, the workforce participation rate remained flat at 61.5% – assuming that there are still 7.3 million people in America who still want work but do not actively seeking employment.
Around 4.6 million people who were not in the workforce in December were unable to look for work because of the pandemic, the BLS said, up from 3.9 million in November.
The December report continued to show large differences in unemployment by race, with minorities such as Black Americans and Hispanics facing unemployment rates above an average of 9.9% and 9.3% , separately.
Quote Cruise
With major oaths of the US economy closed in December to counter the release of Covid-19, it is no surprise that the economy lost jobs in December, ”said James McDonald, CEO of Hercules Investments, based in Los Angeles, about a “disappointment” on Friday. jobs report. “The slower-than-expected roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine is keeping economic locks and social pace measures in place, which is a worrying mix for small businesses and the job market.”
What do you look
McDonald notes that the future economic outlook is linked “to ever more tightness to the increasingly vulnerable labor market,” saying that the relationship between job losses should temporary and permanent layoffs to shed light on how the labor market will take shape once the disease finally spreads.
Key background
Just over half of the 22 million Americans who lost their jobs in the early months of the pandemic are re-employed. The unemployment rate, however, “remains far too high, especially since the headline number is hiding the millions of Americans who have just dropped out of the workforce,” Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Patrick Harker said Wednesday, noting that the inflated number of these long-term unemployment is also troubling. Also on Wednesday, Goldman Sachs noted that the widespread recovery of the coronavirus and the industry constraints that resulted from a slower recovery in the labor market than elsewhere in the economy, such as the a growing stock, for example. “Furthermore, while jobless claims decreased during the pay month, much of the decline marked an end to the program’s eligibility – as opposed to a reset,” Goldman analysts noted. -near, citing the same week of unemployment relief that went down as a result of President Donald Trump’s delay in signing the $ 900 billion incentive package over the holidays.
Amazing info
“Layoffs in the leisure and hospitality and other virus – sensitive services halted the job recovery that began in May and which we expect to continue in 2021,” Goldman said Wednesday. Fed President Harker, meanwhile, says that about 30% of employment in these sectors has “depleted” year over year – marking a “still remarkable decline” nearly a year into the pandemic.
A large number
19.2 million. That’s the number of people still getting some form of unemployment benefit last week – extremely high compared to the comparable 1.8 million a week in 2020, according to published weekly data Thursday. That’s higher than the number of unemployed Americans, due to a staggering number of people who have dropped out of the workforce because they are no longer looking for work.
Further reading
Unemployment claims remain flat at 787,000 as states begin issuing additional $ 300 checks (Forbes)
Democrats in Control could be recovering from a full economic recovery and another $ 1 trillion in stimulus, but here’s the catch (Forbes)