The August employment report from the Labor Department showed no “second shutdown” of economic activity has occurred due to the surges in COVID-19 first in the South and Southwest and now in the Midwest states. Employment increased by nearly 1.4 million, although this was a lower increase than in May or July and overwhelmingly in services employment (goods-producing employment gained just 29,000 jobs, all in manufacturing, and transportation and warehousing gained 78,000). A sizable chunk (335,000) came from Federal hiring for the Census.
If employment now is compared to the beginning of this year, it is still down 12 million jobs; but the goods-producing employment decline is only 750,000 of that. Healthcare and health services employment is still 1.5 million lower than in January. So the pace of reemployment has not stopped as one would have gathered from most media speculations; but it would take until the middle of next year to get back to the pre-collapse level without an intervention to create new productive jobs areas.
