Politico: “The U.S. job market recovery appears to be starting to stall, threatening President Donald Trump’s narrative of a rapid American comeback and a quickly declining unemployment rate headed toward the November election.”
“The July jobs report on Friday morning showed a gain of 1.8 million, an impressive number in ordinary times but well below the 4.8 million created in June. A measure of private payrolls this week showed a gain of just 167,000 jobs in July, dramatically below the expected 1.2 million. New jobless claims declined a bit last week after two weeks of increases but remain above 1 million per week, blowing away the old record of 695,000 in 1982. And while Trump has promised a ‘big’ jobs number on Friday, the unemployment rate in July was 10.2 percent, a daunting figure for any incumbent president and higher than the worst level of the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. The Covid crisis that slammed the U.S. in March and shuttered much of the economy wiped out tens of millions of jobs, erasing gains from the last decade and digging a hole that may take years to escape. And the pace of hiring slowed in recent weeks amid a rise in Covid cases in many states and deep uncertainty among employers about whether and when to bring back laid off or furloughed workers.”