BC ECONOMY
Saved by @Alex1Powell

Happy #JobsDay. 8:30 ET @BLS_gov delivers the most-important signals abt how economy is changing.

Forecasts' center:
+432,000 jobs
6.8% unemployment, tick down from 6.9%

But lots of reason to expect weaker jobs growth.

 +245K jobs gained last month (mid-Oct to mid-Nov).

Small +11K revisions of last 2 months.

This continues the deceleration of job growth we seen steadily for months.
We are down 9.8 million jobs since Feb and growth is decelerating, likely to turn negative over the current month.

For comparison, during the Great Recession, we lost fewer than 9 million jobs.
We lost 9.19 million jobs over the last 12 months.
We gained 245K last month (0.2 million). This is half the growth rate over the last 3 months and an eight of the growth rate over the last 6 months.

Deceleration is clear.
93K temporary Census worker layoffs are reflected in the +245K.

The private sector added 344K, this is much weaker than recent months' growth, less than half of last month.
Federal govt borrowed to provide support in the spring, causing a huge spike in fiscal stimulus in 2020Q2. This stepped down in Q3.

Fiscal policy is on track to be negative in Q4, contracting the economy.

This is insane.
https://t.co/8zJ48EafC7
The share of adults working or searching for working -- the labor force participation rate -- down 0.2 percentage points (pp) to 61.5%, suggesting people stopped looking for work.

Been basically stalled for months.
The unemployment rate also fell 0.2 pp, but improvement stalling.

Reflects unemployed stopping search not finding work, due to rising public health threat making many jobs riskier.

These folks are saving lives & health but market won't pay them for that work. Govt should.
The broadest official measure of labor under-utilization ("U6") has also basically stalled. It includes discouraged workers, those marginally attached to the labor market, and those working part time but who would prefer full time on top of the unemployed.
Average workweek in private sector unchanged at 34.8 hours in Nov.

In manufacturing, workweek decreased by 0.2 hour to 40.3 hours, & overtime decreased by 0.1 hour to 3.1 hours.
In sum,

1) the labor market is stalling with job losses comparable to the bottom of the Great Recession.

2) many jobs are increasingly dangerous & we should pull back from some econ activity to preserve health.
Vaccines will bring improvement but we should protect each other thru the next few months.

Instead, 12-13 million Americans out of work through no fault of their own are about to lose their insurance benefits on the day after Christmas.

https://t.co/bN8zddMhMB
Households expectations are worsening quickly. https://t.co/U9e6k17fzH
Small business expectations are worsening too.
https://t.co/xZ1HKAHb0f
The U.S. economy has, according to the latest official data, 6.4 million job openings.

Unless the federal govt acts, about twice that many people will be kicked off unemployment insurance on Dec 26.

Pre-haunting Ebenezer Scrooge would approve.
It is the best of times on Wall Street.

It is the worst of times on Main Street.
Last thing. @BLS_gov does amazing work to create timely, accurate info about America's working families, a huge public good.

They are there for us & we need to show up for them. If you are a labor economist or care about workers & employment, follow & join @Friends_of_BLS.
Last, last thing.

@snaidunl & I have a new report out today @rooseveltinst.
https://t.co/jHIK2xXWj4

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https://t.co/5Xmt8y7lCL

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