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The most important thing to keep in mind about Thursday’s monstrous jobs report is that it’s a flashback to the moment just before much of the country’s reopening plans went to hell.
Employers officially added a record 4.8 million workers to their payrolls last month, and the unemployment rate fell to 11.1 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Thursday morning. The large number sparked another celebratory press conference at the White House, during which Donald Trump said the country “would return faster, bigger, and better than we thought possible.” But those quick gains were made between mid-May and mid-June, a period during which many states hastily allowed companies like restaurants, bars, and movie theaters to reopen in an attempt to boost their coronavirus-devastated economies. More than 2 million people went back to work just for pleasure and hospitality.
We all know what happened next. The US is now seeing record daily cases as COVID-19 has sprung up across the Sun Belt, forcing states like Texas, California, and Arizona to close their drinking wells again and limit food indoors and out. risky activities. After an unprecedented economic catastrophe, the country quickly regained many jobs in part by ignoring the risks to public health. After stepping on the gas quickly, the governors are forced to curb their plans to avoid accidentally falling off a cliff.
Republicans in Congress and the White House have been supporting a rapid job recovery because they want the economy and American life in general to return to normal before the November election, despite Trump’s abject inability to contain the virus. The Republican Party also wants to limit the size of the next coronavirus relief package, which lawmakers are expected to negotiate this month. They would especially like to cut unemployment benefits from $ 600 a week that the unemployed rely on, in part because they think that will accelerate people’s return to work. And according to Jeff Stein of the Washington Post, the administration believes Thursday’s jobs report will help its cause.
But the new wave of cases and re-enlistments across the country should raise obvious suspicions about whether the country will continue to add jobs at the general rate it did during May and June. There are also many reasons to doubt the economic data. While the overall unemployment rate fell in June, the number of Americans who had lost their jobs permanently, and not just in a temporary layoff, increased. Private sector figures on small business activity suggest that their recovery has begun to slow. Meanwhile, millions of Americans continue to apply for unemployment insurance every week, implying that major layoffs are still taking place. Also Thursday, the Labor Department reported that the number of Americans on the unemployment charts actually increased between the weeks ending June 13 and June 20.
Using June job earnings as an excuse to cut unemployment payments now is a bit illogical, too. After all, what they mainly show is that companies didn’t have much trouble re-hiring workers. The ability to cash a generous government check simply didn’t stop 4.8 million Americans from going back to work. (Notably, even before the new numbers came out, economists had found no evidence that accelerated UI payments were hindering hiring.) Aid, meanwhile, has kept families from falling into poverty and allowed them to continue spending. There is simply no obvious reason to get the crutches out from under the economy before she is clearly able to move on her own, and risks sinking people who cannot return to work in despair.
Thursday’s job numbers are nothing to get too excited about. Rather, they show the limits of trying to revive the economy in the midst of an uncontrolled pandemic: Even when millions returned to work, many millions more remained unemployed, as many companies could only function partially. And the virus returned anyway, forcing states to suspend their reopening plans. Those results are certainly not a reason to take away help from people who are clearly going to need it.
