2/7/20: America's Scariest Charts Updated

Some updates from the US Labour Markets to our America's Scariest Charts series today.

First, headline official Non-Farm Payrolls data for the month of June 2020 is out today. Here is the visual:

Total Non-Farm Payrolls dropped during the COVID19 pandemic to the crisis-period low of 130,303,000 in April 2020. This marks a drop of 22,160,000 on pre-crisis high - a decline of 14.53%, the sharpest drop on record for any recession. Since then, the payrolls improved in May and again in June. Payrolls rose 2,699,000 in May and by 4,800,000 in June, prompting the White House (and the army of its trolls) to herald an 'unprecedented' 'tremendous' recovery. However:

• Despite these gains, current employment levels remain 14,661,000 below pre-COVID19 highs.  
• Relative to the pre-COVID19 trend, current payrolls are 15,398,000 below where they would have been were the pre-crisis trends to remain place. 

Hardly 'tremendous' success so far.

Summary of comparatives of the current recession to prior recessions:

Now, next in the set of our America's Scariest Charts: initial unemployment claims 9also released today). The table above already shows the latest print for these series - for the week ending June 27, 2020, at 1,445,481 new claims filed. This was virtually unchanged on the revised final estimate for the week ending June 20, 2020 that came in at 1,460,056. New claims have basically stabilized from the week of May 30th through latest. 

The six-months moving sum of all initial unemployment claims filings is now at a massive 47.477,907. This number, of course, are reflective of claims filed. And it does not reflect expired claims or people moving from unemployment to employment. Hence, it is useful in only highlighting the relative magnitude of the current jobs crisis controlling for duration.

Prior to the COVID19 pandemic, there has been only one instance of initial unemployment claims exceeding 1 million count in any given week - during the week of January 9, 1982, when there were 1,073,500 new claims filed. Which means that last week's print - although well below peak COVID19 filings - still stands almost 35% above the worst weekly unemployment claims filing in pre-COVID19 history. 

So here is the overall 'recovery' to-date:

You can call it 'magnificent' or 'tremendous' or you can call it 'ugly'. I guess your perspective will depend on your party affiliations and the membership in the 1% vs 99% clubs.