July’s jobs report has just come out this morning showing that we are still trending in the right direction, adding just over 1.7 million jobs with the unemployment rate falling below expectations to 10.2%:
CNBC – Two months of record-setting payroll growth slowed in July but was still better than Wall Street estimates even as a rise in coronavirus cases put a damper on the struggling U.S. economy.
Nonfarm payrolls increased 1.763 million for the month, the Labor Department reported Friday. The unemployment rate fell to 10.2% from its previous 11.1%, also better than the estimates from economists surveyed by Dow Jones.
An alternative measure that includes discouraged workers and the underemployed holding part-time jobs for economic reasons fell from 18% to 16.5%.
July’s report “confirms that the resurgence in new virus cases caused the economic recovery to slow, but also underlines that it has not yet gone into reverse,” said Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “With new infections now trending clearly lower again and high-frequency activity indicators showing tentative signs of a renewed upturn, employment should continue to rebound over the coming months.”
Fox Business host Dagen McDowell points out that we’ve already recovered 42% of the jobs that were lost in March after everything shut down:
McDowell notes that the total number of jobs we’ve recovered is 9.23 million out of the 22.2 million that were lost earlier this year. She says we have a long way to go but we are heading in the right direction.