Long thread on upcoming #JobsDay—

This Friday, BLS will release new data showing how many jobs were gained—or lost—in July. This data is critical for understanding whether the economy is in recovery or if it’s stalling.

The forecasts are mixed.
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We expect weak data on the jobs front because of the rise in covid cases across the country, which has led consumers to stay home and policymakers to enforce more social distancing and closures. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
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As @ernietedeschi explains in this thread, forecasters looking at new data predict BLS data will show that the economy has either added or shed about 1 million jobs in July https://twitter.com/ernietedeschi/status/1288476633041645571 3/

A study from the @stlouisfed finds employment recovery has halted likely b/c of rising cases https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2020/august/recent-covid19-us-employment-slowdown

You can also check out the Census Household Pulse data, yourself https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/demo/hhp/hhp12.html 4/

New data from payroll firm ADP show the economy added 167k new jobs in July. If it were normal times, that wouldn’t be too shabby.

But after losing 20.8 MILLION jobs in April and gaining just 7.5 million back in May & June, 167k is troubling https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/adp-national-employment-report-private-sector-employment-increased-by-167-000-jobs-in-july-301106573.html 5/

Overall, this is not good news and indicates a stall in the jobs recovery. June unemployment was 11.1%, which is lower than the prior months, but still higher than at any time since the Great Depression. The share of the population with a job was 54.6%, also a historic low. 6/