Woof. A jobs report miss worse than April.
Less than 1/3 of the expected payroll jobs.
And the unemployment rate continued its decline--normally a good thing, but in this case it just signals the lack of workers rejoining the labor force. There were good reasons to avoid work before vaccines were widely available, and the Delta variant has renewed some of those fears (but shouldn't really be a problem for most who are vaccinated).

Here’s a summary thread of just-released research by myself and @JohnMoz at @AccountableEcon.
In short, as part of a COVID-19 bailout Congress should mandate that states end their economic development arms race.
mercatus.org/system/files/f… State and cities will likely see a budget shortfall of $950+ billion. House Democrats already passed a $1 trillion relief bill, but Republicans aren’t eager to rescue states from self-imposed fiscal difficulties. A ban on subsidies offers an easy starting compromise.

I’m happy to announce research released today with @MattMitchell80, @jmhorp, and @OliviaJGonzalez.

This is a thread summarizing our findings.
mercatus.org/publications/g… The study broadly analyzes targeted economic development subsides, using Foxconn in Wisconsin as a case study. It uses @TimBartik’s prev. research to build a cost-benefit analysis tool to evaluate the long-run effect.

Spoiler: It’s not good.

@Richard_Florida @iamstevenpedigo Agreed. Despite protests otherwise, Amazon almost certainly knew where it was going--it's too good at everything else it does to do otherwise. @Richard_Florida @iamstevenpedigo Now that the "competition" is over I can air my speculations:
Plans to expand the subway station in Crystal City came out in July 2017, 2 months BEFORE Amazon released it's RFP. Crystal City was stagnant--no reason for the expansion, unless they knew something big was coming...