THREAD: Any GOP idea that if the June job report (out Thursday, July 2) brings back another 2-3 million lost jobs we are out of the woods and don’t need another major fiscal package for state/local relief, unemployment is just absurd. Let me count the ways.
2/ First, economists like Moody's Mark Zandi – see the “corrected” unemployment rate now (including classification errors & labor disruption)as 19.2%. Its 16.3% just w/ must classification error. Anyway you cut it; unemployment will be at 80 year highs after the June report.
3/Second, because the June jobs report is based on samples from the week of June 8, it may miss the slowing due to the clear spike in COVID. Data from Homebase, for example, shows job worsening around June 24th - which would not be captured in the June jobs report.
4/ Third, job loss in states & local government got worse (not better) by 571K in May. Now down over 1.5 million w/over half in education. EPI estimates we could lose 5.3 million such jobs - including teachers & first responders - with no additional aid.
5/Fourth, there is clear evidence that layoffs are still unusually high: new unemployment claims continue to come in around 2 million. Note: that is about 3X the previous all-time (pre-COVID) record of 695K.
6/ Fifth, even if a couple million more jobs are reported as coming back in June, we would still be down a staggering 17 million jobs! Analyses show that most of them would not even have been lost had our WH had as quick and strong response as most other major nations.
