The BLS released its latest count of job gains and losses today. Here's the net number:
This comes to a net job loss over 2020-21 of about 2.6 million jobs. The PAYEMS series puts it at 2.9 million jobs. The employment level data shows a loss of 2.5 million jobs. So everyone is on the same page.
Keep in mind that this goes only through the end of 2021. Both the PAYEMS and the employment level figures show a whopping gain of about 3 million jobs over the past six months. This means that by the end of last month we had made back all the job losses of the pandemic and we're now even with the employment level of early 2020.
Yet salaries are not close to keeping up with inflation....hmmm....
First sentence--did you mean to say gains instead of losses?
Errrr....second sentence.
I'm guessing the plot is monthly data and is showing percent change, so in 2021 it shows employment gains, month to month, of a few percent. However, that was not enough to cover all the job losses due to onset of pandemic. In the discussion, he switched to job totals relative to pre-pandemic levels.
Okay, so it's more bad news for Joe Biden and the Democrats? 😉
Difference of 0.4 million between high and low. The high being 16% higher than the low. That’s a pretty large page.
Among the measures used by economists, a mere 16% difference among observers is high precision.
The last BLS report said:
Total nonfarm employment is down by 524,000, or 0.3 percent, from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020. Private-sector employment has recovered the net job losses due to the pandemic and is 140,000 higher than in February 2020, while government employment is 664,000 lower.
Anecdotally... my daughter is looking for a job and reports employers are saying "oh, that job opening no longer exists". Weird when employers can't find people to hire and unemployed workers can't find jobs, at the same time.