The U.S. Labor Department, judging from its June employment report today, has lost the ability to report with even rough accuracy, the slow improvement in employment which is occurring in the United States economy from the unprecedented mass unemployment in April. This report, strongly emphasized in a press statement this morning by President Donald Trump as showing fast recovery of the economy, said that 142 million Americans were employed in June — a month-to-month increase of 4.8 million jobs— out of a labor force of approximately 165 million. But it put the number of unemployed at just 17.9 million.
Shadowing this, however, was the weekly report on unemployment claims, also released this morning by the same Labor Department at the same time. The not seasonally adjusted figures in this report show 31.492 million Americans receiving “continuing unemployment benefits” in the week ending June 13, just about the same period of days in which the surveys for the monthly report were taken. They also show 1.445 million new claims in the week ended June 27 and 1.45 million in the week ended June 20, thus 2.9 million more claims since the 31.492 figure (for state and Federal benefits combined) was calculated.
Is it possible that 31.5 million people were receiving unemployment benefits when just 17.9 million were unemployed? This is only one of the contradictions which abound in the Labor Department’s current reporting. Another, is that the Department is no longer making any effective distinction between Americans in and out of the labor force, because the requirement to be looking for work in order to receive unemployment benefits was dropped under the “relief” acts. And still another is a systemic error by its survey-takers, admitted by the Department in each of the last three months, of counting some millions of workers “on temporary layoff” due to the pandemic, as employed. Indeed, due to the Payroll Protection Program loans, their employers may still be paying them.
Nonetheless employment clearly is improving, especially in “leisure and hospitality” and “retail” which account for half of the reported 4.8 million jobs rebound; healthcare jobs add another 900,000. A “harder” or more reliable measure may be the reported drop in the number of workers forced to work part-time, from 10.6 million to 9.0 million. [pbg]
