Ugh.
Jobs Day, December 2020
Interestingly, with the +135,000 revisions to Oct and Nov, employment was "only" down -5,000 from what we thought before.
With today's -140,000 payroll read, the average monthly jobs growth over the last three months has been +283,000. That would normally be excellent performance. But not now. It means it'd take three years just to get back to Feb 2020 employment. Hopefully growth will accelerate.
Overall employment is still -6 1/2 % down from where it was back in February, which is still a bit higher than the *worst* gap during the Great Recession.

Some sectors are even worse off. Leisure & Hospitality employment is still -23% down from February; its jobs declined in Dec
The Household Survey was remarkable with how frozen it was. The overall unemployment rate, labor force participation rate, and EPOP were all virtually identical to November, at 2-digit significance.

One good piece of news though: part-time for economic reasons fell by -30bp.
Also good news in the Household Survey: the prime-age (25-54) employment-to-population ratio rose by +30bp.
(cont) It rose +20bp for women and +40bp for men.
The rate at which the nonemployed found jobs in December was flat, and in line with pre-COVID trend. That's not good news: given the weak labor market we want this to be higher so we can make up lost ground faste.r
Meanwhile the job *exit* rate has risen slightly the last two months in a row, which is also not good news.

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More from @ernietedeschi

25 Dec 20
Canada and the US were the two most generous advanced countries when it came to direct aid (Germany's fiscal response looks bigger on paper, but the vast majority of it was just in the form of loan guarantees or other non-direct aid). /1
Canada gave the equivalent of USD $1,560 per month to its jobless workers through the CERB program, *in lieu of* their version of UI (which they call EI). This went until October. Since in theory you weren't supposed to get both EI & CERB, CERB shouldn't have counted as EI weeks.
The US by contrast gave USD $2,600 per month to all UI recipients, *on top of* their UI benefits, through July 31. That includes gig economy PUA beneficiaries who got around $200 per week base benefits in their program; Canada's CERB was meant to address gig workers too.
Read 9 tweets
21 Dec 20
Here's a pre-buttal on some takes we're sure to see on this new stimulus package:

1. Stimulus checks are only around 1/5 of the total bill.
2. UI in America typically pays around 50% of pre-layoff wages, though it varies. With this extra $300/week, that will be ~85%.

1/X
3. If you're unemployed, you get an extra $1,300 per month through mid-March. If you're a gig worker or been out of work since early 2020, that's on top of having your UI benefits extended.

2/X
4. The bill includes another ~$300 billion in PPP loans, which are essentially payroll support for small businesses. If a business wants them *fully* forgiven, they essentially have to maintain their employment and wages -- effectively the equivalent 100% payroll support.

3/X
Read 7 tweets
4 Dec 20
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.
Read 5 tweets
3 Dec 20
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
2 Dec 20
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
25 Nov 20
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

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