The US Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday turned out worse than expected. 140,000 Jobs were Lost, leaving the unemployment rate unchanged at 6.7%. Job loss and the American economy is still driven by Coronavirus. “What’s really driving the economy is still the path of the virus,” Erica Groshen, a senior economic adviser at Cornell University and the former commissioner of the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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The hospitality industry and the private education industry were badly hit, with the hospitality industry shedding 498,000 jobs, and the private education industry shedding 63,000 jobs. These job losses were partially offset by some hiring last month in professional and business services (an uptick of 161,000 jobs), retail trade (an addition of 121,000) and construction (which added 51,000).
“There have been huge losses in leisure and hospitality and travel-related industries,” Groshen noted. “And many of these are low-wage workers [who] cannot do the work from home.” Moreover, “these are places where business models may be changing, and so many of these jobs may not come back,” Groshen said. She said that one of her concerns for the recovery is the growing number of temporary furloughs that have turned into permanent job losses.
By: Victor Nnadi
An Independent Economics Researcher
