Good News? August 2020 Monthly Jobs Report

Sorry, normally this thread gets started earlier. Here’s the report:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

We’re in crazy COVID-19 times so it’s kinda hard to interpret some of this data and what it means for the economy. But, unemployment down to 8.4%. Good. 1.4 million jobs “created”. Yeah, that one is hard to evaluate. 238,000 of those jobs are temp government census jobs. But more people are getting back to work. That’s good. Labor participation 61.7. I don’t actually care about this one, but it’s up. Still down quite a bit from earlier in the year, and I don’t know if we even get back to what it was before. And again, I will say that low sixties labor participation is fine for an industrialized nation.

Wages. Wages gets screwy as hell. Up 18 cents but that’s after down 11 cents last month. I’ll just quote the report here because no one knows what the hell is going on:

“The large employment fluctuations over the past several months–especially in industries with
lower-paid workers–complicate the analysis of recent trends in average hourly earnings.”

I think the meat of the report is where the job growth is and where it was. The nation is just trying to claw back right now, and in all honesty, that’s going to take at least a couple years. But actual industry breakdwon: Manufacturing down over 700,000 since February. Financial services down 191,000 since February. “Other Services” which is a weird category, down 531,000 since February. Education and health services…down 1.5 million since February. Leisure and hospitality…down 2.5 million since February. Professional services…down 1.5 million since February. Retail…down 655,000 since February. I actually thought that number would be higher. Government down 831,000 since February. That’s with all the temp census takers. These are crazy numbers. Really hard to analyze.

So…overall…more people hired which is good. Wages suck. Participation is fine. But there is just a gigantic drop that will take at least a couple years to come back to. So…Good News???

It’s good news, for sure, but millions of people are still out of work, and 800k-1 mil people still go on employment every week. Hopefully this keeps up and all the people that lost their jobs get them back.

I am fine with the report, but I just have to be a realist. This is going to be a slow ass recovery. The gains we’re seeing now are part of the stuff that is finally opening back up. There’s a huge section that is not going to open back up. I’m guessing we’ll be around 7% around election day. And it’s going to take months and months and months to get that down to normal after the election. Regardless of who is president.

Good news.

There will be parts of economy that will never come back like restaurants, fitness/gyms etc.

I’m seeing a massive movement in lifestyle.

Catering service, outdoor living etc will be the future IMO.

Professional sports is done IMO.

its not going to take a couple of years. we know gllom doom despair and agony are what the leftist masters preach, but it just ain’t so.

50% of job losses have been recouped in 3 months.

The economy will absolutely shift. No doubt about it. I’m really curious what it will be like in two years.

for the foreseeable future, likely. people may actually be discovering they like those services better than going to crowded restaurants where other people intrude on your privacy and ability to relax,

sports will come back, but it will be downsized as many fans “take a knee” themselves. I for one, and I’m a huge baseball and football fan, will not be going to or watching any games until these pampered millionaires stand the ■■■■ up.

Yeah, and that still leaves how many millions who don’t have jobs? That other percentage is going to take years to get back. Sorry, that’s just a fact.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/august-jobs-report-the-jobs-recovery-is-expected-to-slow-further/ar-BB18HGs0?li=BBnbfcN

Key number…permanent job losses.

no, it ain’t. we’ve already blown the cbo projections out of the water for where we’ll be at the end of the year. as long as policies don’t shift against it, we’ll be back where we were in 6 months.

Based on what? And what CBO projections? I like to see the actual numbers.

I can’t help to think in home/shop manufacturing/products will be big. Like point of demand products. Like buy/built locally.

Probably. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I do worry about benefits for workers though.

You have to be poor to kneel for social causes.

1 Like

But…about the actual jobs report…anyone have thoughts? To stimulate(giggity) discussion I was surprised at how low the retail drop has been since February. But that totatlly fits with how the economy was transitioning even before COVID. I should have thought of that.

there ya go

cbo projected unemployment to be 11.4% for 2020 and down to 10.1% for 2021.

4th Q unenployment estimated to be 11.7%.

Gyms will problary likely come back. In one way or the other.
Restaurants wont be the same after this crisis is over with i agree.

Professional sports is done

Which sports? MMA/UFC kickboxing can be handheld in a safe way and i think they had being handling things pretty well.

8.4% unemployment?

1 Like

Pro sports just need to retool given the current situation.

I will be back better than ever in a few years.

Same thing with college sports, high school sports.

There are always going to be a demand for a really good human athlete.

They have been admired by all for eons.

Allan

Let’s put this into prospective. It take Obama about 2 years and 4 months to bring unemployment down from 10 percent to 8.4 percent…28 months. 28 months…think about that one for moment.

Some info.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/article/great-recession-great-recovery.htm

2 Likes

Obama is not my standard for good governance.