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Ernie Tedeschi Profile picture
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4 Dec, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Jobs Day, November 2020
The good news is: payrolls grew. The bad news is: payrolls only grew +245K when we still have a ~10 mil jobs gap. At that pace it would take until the end of 2024 just to get back to where employment was in February.

We all hope & expect jobs will reaccelerate, but this is weak
And the gaps remain large. Leisure & hospitality employment remains more than 20% smaller than it was pre-COVID, even after recovering many of the initial jobs lost.

The overall gap is only now reaching its *greatest extent* during the Great Recession.
The share of the unemployed finding jobs fell in November, partly reflecting the weak labor market overall and partly reflecting the types of workers remaining unemployed and the difficulties they face.
The share of *any* nonemployed person (whether unemployed or out of the labor force) finding a job also fell in November, back to something looking like pre-COVID equilibrium. That's worrying given how many jobs are still lost.

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More from @ernietedeschi

Ernie Tedeschi Profile picture
3 Dec
As a reminder, my base models, which use Homebase, Kronos/UKG, & UI claims data, are pointing to a -515K to -228K seasonally-adjusted decline in nonfarm payrolls for November tomorrow (-198K to +93K non-seasonally-adjusted).

One more attempt at kicking the tires... /1
Homebase, in a report published this week, showed how their index performed last year. As you can see, there were declines between October and November last year as well.

In fact last year's Oct-Nov decline was -4%; this year it's -3%, a bit *better*. /2 joinhomebase.com/wp-content/upl…
Now let's pause here and notice too that there have been *several* months now where Homebase data outperformed in 2020 month-to-month versus 2019. And yet the base models have performed well. /3
Read 6 tweets
Ernie Tedeschi Profile picture
2 Dec
Ahead of the ADP release at 8:15am, a brief thread on what high-frequency private data is suggesting we'll get for November payrolls, why it might be right, and why it might be wrong. /1
Note that I've augmented my high-frequency payrolls model to more explicitly address autocorrelation. /2
Data from Homebase, Kronos/UKG, and UI claims is consistent with November payroll employment growing at -515K to -228K seasonally-adjusted (-198K to +93K non-seasonally-adjusted). /3
Read 11 tweets
Ernie Tedeschi Profile picture
25 Nov
The latest UI claims, Homebase, & Kronos numbers are consistent with payrolls coming in at -67K not-seasonally-adjusted for November, and -386K seasonally-adjusted. Image
There was a "pop" in the latest week of the Kronos data, but 1) it was the week after the reference week, and 2) because Kronos allows its sample to change over time, it may reflect new customers rather than employment changes at existing ones.
The St. Louis Fed uses Kronos microdata to calculate a "chained" version that keeps sample composition constant, but they don't have the latest week yet. Will be interesting to see if that rise is robust.
Read 5 tweets
Ernie Tedeschi Profile picture
23 Nov
🚨🚨🚨
A slew of recent data is consistent with slow or even negative jobs growth in November. A quick thread.
November is typically a month when we expect raw, non-seasonally-adjusted employment data to *strengthen* (due, among other things, to hiring up for the holidays).

So when the unadjusted data is weakening or shrinking in November, that's an especially bad sign.
Data from Homebase, a private scheduling firm, suggest shrinking employment b/t mid-Oct and mid-Nov. Kronos, a different firm, shows slightly positive but weak growth.

Both, in tandem w/ UI claims, are consistent with -143K jobs in Nov not-seasonally-adjusted, or -461K adjusted.
Read 8 tweets
Ernie Tedeschi Profile picture
19 Nov
Initial claims rise modestly week over week, were ~1.1 million last week.
The recent declines in regular UI recipients, properly including the extended PEUC and EB programs, may be slowing.
And to punctuate that point: ~230,000 workers looked like they left regular state UI at the end of October, but actually just exhausted their regular benefits and transferred to the federal extended PEUC program.
Read 4 tweets
Ernie Tedeschi Profile picture
18 Nov
On the one hand, the US recovery so far has been durably positive & modest

On the other hand, b/t the COVID surge, the cold winter weather, exhausted household savings, the end of moratoria on student loans/foreclosures/evictions, & UI expirations, we're piling on a lot of risks
And add on the risks of business closures & state/local cuts. There's a lot that can hurt us economically between now and wide vaccine distribution.
The wrong question to ask is whether the recovery is "self-sustaining" without further fiscal support. I am less confident in this assessment now, but it's still quite possible that if we got no fiscal package most economic data would continue coming in north of zero.

Instead...
Read 8 tweets

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