Thread by @bencasselman

The coronavirus pandemic just wiped out nearly a decade of job gains practically over night. Lowest payroll employment total since 2011.
nytimes.com/2020/05/08/bus…

The employment-population ratio, at 51.3%, was the lowest *ever.* (This doesn't adjust for the aging population, but the drop is still unbelievable.)

The unemployment rate didn't rise quite as much as some anticipated, but at 14.7% it's still the highest since the Great Depression (before official records were kept), when it hit about 25%.

One glimmer of good news: 78% of unemployed workers report being on temporary layoff, meaning their jobs could come back quickly when the economy restarts. (Of course, temporary layoffs can turn permanent.)

The damage is spreading: The diffusion index (measure of how many sectors are adding or cutting jobs) plunged to 28.5 in April. (Readings under 50 indicate most sectors are contracting.) Worse than at the bottom of the Great Recession.

The unemployment rate didn't rise quite as much as some anticipated, but at 14.7% it's still the highest since the Great Depression (before official records were kept), when it hit about 25%.
(Repeats earlier tweet to fix broken thread.)

The drop in the employment-population ratio captures the loss of jobs but not the loss in hours for those still employed. Full-time employment also plunged.

Nearly 11 million people reported working part-time because they couldn't find full-time work or because their hours had been cut back.
cc @D_Blanchflower, who has documented the relationship between "part-time for economic reasons" and (weak) wage growth.

Number of "marginally attached" workers rose, but not by as much as I might have expected -- many people who aren't looking for work might not meet the (fairly restrictive) definition of marginal attachment.
Labor force shrank by 6.4 million, but marg. attachment up by <1m.

Huge spike in people reported as being absent from work for "other" reasons, many of whom @BLS_gov says should have been recorded as unemployed.
If they had been, "the overall unemployment rate would have been almost 5 percentage points higher than reported," or nearly 20%.

Here's how job losses ripple through the economy: Lost jobs and hours mean lost earnings, means lost spending. Huge plunge in aggregate earnings in April. (Not that average hourly wages rose due to composition effects.)

The collapse in leisure and hospitality jobs is obviously not a surprise, but it's still stunning to see: More than 7.5 million jobs lost in a single month.

We've talked for years about a "retail apocalypse." Well, THIS is a retail apocalypse. And what's especially worrying is that unlike jobs elsewhere in the economy, many of these won't bounce back.

Health care has been the one "can't miss" sector for years, adding jobs every month even through the Great Recession. Not anymore -- it lost more than 2 million jobs in April, as dentists' offices closed and people canceled elective procedures.

Re: the "lowest-ever employment rate": The aging population was pulling down the employment rate/participation rate before the crisis. But honestly things don't look much better once you adjust for that.

So much for that brief moment where women accounted for more payroll jobs than men. Job losses have hit women significantly harder than men in this crisis.

Before the pandemic, the employment rate for prime-age women had finally surpassed its 2000-era peak. Men were still far behind. Now both have seen a dramatic plunge.

Less educated workers have been hit hardest -- the unemployment rate for the least educated workers topped 20%. But it's notable how little protection education offers in this crisis: Unemployment rate for college grads is 8.4%. Never topped 5% in last recession.

About 2/3 of people leaving employment last month became unemployed (had been about 1/4). Rest left the labor force.
I thought there might be a gender split given childcare issues. But not much evidence of that here.

Not that there's any question about whether we're in a recession, but @Claudia_Sahm's unemployment-based rule is still a striking indicator of the speed. Jumped in one month to essentially its high point from the last recession.