More Labor Market Data

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We noted in yesterday's posting on weekly new claims for unemployment insurance that there would be still more labor market data today. Today's information is at the national level; state-level data will not be available for a few more days. And it comes with all the caveats concerning the effects of the coronavirus crisis on data collection and the fact that it is backward looking to mid-August. Still, it shows overall improvement but still a bad situation in absolute terms. The level of employment compared to the same month last year is down by over 10 million. A total of 13.6 million are officially classified as unemployed.

The official news release is at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf.