[BostonCard]

Lost in all the election hoopla is the following:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/06/unemploy...oning.html

The good news is that unemployment has fallen to 6.9% (down from 7.9%) and 638,000 new jobs.  The bad news is that as we are now 8 months into the pandemic, more and more of the remaining unemployed are moving into the "long-term unemployed" category.

Further, being out of work for more than six months makes it harder to find a new job. Employers are less likely to hire such workers, at the same time that job networking becomes more difficult and worker skills may start to erode, Stettner said.

The number of unemployed workers exceeds job openings by a roughly 2-to-1 margin, making jobs hard to find, too.

People have argued about the shape of the recovery, but more and more this looks like the "backwards square root sign", where a big drop in employment is followed by a significant, but incomplete, recovery followed by slow improvement.  And that is pending the third wave of COVID, which could send the recovery into a second dip.

BC

[BostonCard]

Lost in all the election hoopla is the following:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/06/unemploy...oning.html

The good news is that unemployment has fallen to 6.9% (down from 7.9%) and 638,000 new jobs.  The bad news is that as we are now 8 months into the pandemic, more and more of the remaining unemployed are moving into the "long-term unemployed" category.

Further, being out of work for more than six months makes it harder to find a new job. Employers are less likely to hire such workers, at the same time that job networking becomes more difficult and worker skills may start to erode, Stettner said.

The number of unemployed workers exceeds job openings by a roughly 2-to-1 margin, making jobs hard to find, too.

People have argued about the shape of the recovery, but more and more this looks like the "backwards square root sign", where a big drop in employment is followed by a significant, but incomplete, recovery followed by slow improvement.  And that is pending the third wave of COVID, which could send the recovery into a second dip.

BC