That sound you hear is all the jaws dropping to the floor!
The May jobs report came out much better than expected. Unemployment hit 13.3% while payrolls went up by 2.5 million.
April’s unemployment rate was 14.7%.
Yes, 13.3% is still high, but economists predicted it to land around 20%. They also thought payrolls would go down by 8.3%.
The big jump in payroll indicates jobs have come back. This makes sense since we saw a “2.7 million decrease in workers who reported being on temporary layoff” the other day with the unemployment claims report.
CNBC noted that the payroll gain in May is “by far the biggest one-month jobs gain in u.S. history since at least 1939.”
States have started to reopen as the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic winds down.
We see this in the report since “leisure and hospitality workers made up almost half the increase, with 1.2 million going back to work.” The bars and restaurant sector rose by 1.4 million.
From Reuters:
Still, May was probably the nadir for the labor market. While layoffs remained very high, they eased considerably in the second half of May as businesses reopened after shuttering in mid-March to slow the spread of COVID-19.Consumer confidence, manufacturing and services industries are also stabilizing, though at low levels, hopeful signs that the worst was over.“The good news is that we probably have hit the bottom,” said Sung Won Sohn, a finance and economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “But the recovery will be painfully slow. It will take years, probably a decade to get back to where we were at the end of last year.”
Unfortunately, the riots in response to George Floyd’s killing could keep the economy growth at a slow pace.
Many businesses prepared to open up. But due to looters and rioters destroying private property, some decided to board up and delay openings.
[Featured image via YouTube]
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