In these times of coronavirus, time becomes blurry and events quickly overtake us. However, with all the caveats about the distortions the pandemic has caused in official labor-market data collection, there did seem to be signs of recovery back in June - just a month ago. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported earlier today that the official unemployment rate fell in California from 16.4% in May to 14.9% in June.
Nonfarm payroll employment in California in that interval rose by 3.4%.*
Unfortunately, as we have noted in prior posts, the improvement accompanied a relaxation of the shutdown which led to increased public circulation for both recreation and protests around the Memorial Day weekend. With a lag, as might be expected, new cases of coronavirus followed that circulation, leading to a return to more restrictions on economic and social activity. We noted yesterday that there are now signs of a stall in the state's labor market based on new unemployment insurance claims data.**
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*https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/laus.pdf.
**https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2020/07/stall-warning.html.
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