[Farm93]

Initial unemployment claims was 712,000.  So only about 3x the new jobs.
https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending November 14 was 20,163,477, a decrease of 349,633 from the previous week. There were 1,573,485 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2019.

That is an apples-to-oranges comparison.  To be clear, 712,000 is the initial unemployment claims, while the jobs report lists net new jobs.  Remember, while people go onto unemployment, others go off unemployment.

None of that is to trivialize the economic situation, because we are still a lot behind where we were in February.  Total non-farm payroll at the peak in February was 152.46 million.  By April, it had fallen to 130.30 million, a level that was last seen a few months after the trough of the the Great Recession.  By the November employment report, it had come back to 142.63 million, so we have gained back about 12 million of the 22 million that were lost at the beginning of the pandemic, which would put us roughly at October, 2015 in terms of employment.  But, and this is important, we still have another 10 million to go before we are back to the employment levels we saw in January.

As a basis for comparison, from peak to trough in the Great Recession, we lost about 9.6 million jobs, so right now, even with the jobs that have been recovered, we are in a worse net position than we were during the bottom of the Great Recession.

BC

BC -
And those numbers are all before the latest SiP efforts that are just about to hit CA and a few other big states. 

Props to the service sector owners for trying to spread hours across all of their employees.   However that has meant a lot of service sector employees are underemployed, working far fewer hours than they worked in any comparable pre-pandemic pay period. 

It will be a very tough 3-4 months presumably with unemployment and underemployment moving up in the service sectors for a few months.  The economy could really be vibrant in late 2021 as those households that have maintained their earning power through the pandemic but were unable to spend should be eager and able to spend money.   The rush to normal activities could even become a touch inflationary in some sectors, but that's a worry for a different time.

[Farm93]

Initial unemployment claims was 712,000.  So only about 3x the new jobs.
https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending November 14 was 20,163,477, a decrease of 349,633 from the previous week. There were 1,573,485 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2019.

That is an apples-to-oranges comparison.  To be clear, 712,000 is the initial unemployment claims, while the jobs report lists net new jobs.  Remember, while people go onto unemployment, others go off unemployment.

None of that is to trivialize the economic situation, because we are still a lot behind where we were in February.  Total non-farm payroll at the peak in February was 152.46 million.  By April, it had fallen to 130.30 million, a level that was last seen a few months after the trough of the the Great Recession.  By the November employment report, it had come back to 142.63 million, so we have gained back about 12 million of the 22 million that were lost at the beginning of the pandemic, which would put us roughly at October, 2015 in terms of employment.  But, and this is important, we still have another 10 million to go before we are back to the employment levels we saw in January.

As a basis for comparison, from peak to trough in the Great Recession, we lost about 9.6 million jobs, so right now, even with the jobs that have been recovered, we are in a worse net position than we were during the bottom of the Great Recession.

BC

BC -
And those numbers are all before the latest SiP efforts that are just about to hit CA and a few other big states. 

Props to the service sector owners for trying to spread hours across all of their employees.   However that has meant a lot of service sector employees are underemployed, working far fewer hours than they worked in any comparable pre-pandemic pay period. 

It will be a very tough 3-4 months presumably with unemployment and underemployment moving up in the service sectors for a few months.  The economy could really be vibrant in late 2021 as those households that have maintained their earning power through the pandemic but were unable to spend should be eager and able to spend money.   The rush to normal activities could even become a touch inflationary in some sectors, but that's a worry for a different time.