May 8, 2020 REACTIONS

Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the unemployment rate in April increased to 14.7%

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2010	9.8	9.8	9.9	9.9	9.6	9.4	9.4	9.5	9.5	9.4	9.8	9.3
2011	9.1	9.0	9.0	9.1	9.0	9.1	9.0	9.0	9.0	8.8	8.6	8.5
2012	8.3	8.3	8.2	8.2	8.2	8.2	8.2	8.1	7.8	7.8	7.7	7.9
2013	8.0	7.7	7.5	7.6	7.5	7.5	7.3	7.2	7.2	7.2	6.9	6.7
2014	6.6	6.7	6.7	6.2	6.3	6.1	6.2	6.1	5.9	5.7	5.8	5.6
2015	5.7	5.5	5.4	5.4	5.6	5.3	5.2	5.1	5.0	5.0	5.1	5.0
2016	4.9	4.9	5.0	5.0	4.8	4.9	4.8	4.9	5.0	4.9	4.7	4.7
2017	4.7	4.6	4.4	4.4	4.4	4.3	4.3	4.4	4.2	4.1	4.2	4.1
2018	4.1	4.1	4.0	4.0	3.8	4.0	3.8	3.8	3.7	3.8	3.7	3.9
2019	4.0	3.8	3.8	3.6	3.6	3.7	3.7	3.7	3.5	3.6	3.5	3.5
2020	3.6	3.5	4.4	14.7

Chart: Reprinted from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

Friday, May 8, 2020

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- APRIL 2020

Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 20.5 million in April, and the unemployment rate rose to 14.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The changes in these measures reflect the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it. Employment fell sharply in all major industry sectors, with particularly heavy job losses in leisure and hospitality.

This news release presents statistics from two monthly surveys. The household survey measures labor force status, including unemployment, by demographic characteristics. The establishment survey measures nonfarm employment, hours, and earnings by industry. For more information about the concepts and statistical methodology used in these two surveys, see the Technical Note.

Household Survey Data

In April, the unemployment rate increased by 10.3 percentage points to 14.7 percent. This is the highest rate and  the largest over-the-month increase in the history of the series (seasonally adjusted data are available back to January 1948). The number of unemployed persons rose by 15.9 million to 23.1 million in April. The sharp increases in these measures reflect the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and efforts to contain it. (See table A-1. For more information about how the household survey and its measures were affected by the coronavirus pandemic, see the box at the end of the news release.)

In April, unemployment rates rose sharply among all major worker groups. The rate was 13.0 percent for adult men, 15.5 percent for adult women, 31.9 percent for teenagers, 14.2 percent for Whites, 16.7 percent for Blacks, 14.5 percent for Asians, and 18.9 percent for Hispanics. The rates for all of these groups, with the exception of Blacks, represent record highs for their respective series. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

The number of unemployed persons who reported being on temporary layoff increased about ten-fold to 18.1 million in April. The number of permanent job losers increased by 544,000 to 2.0 million. (See table A-11.)

In April, the number of unemployed persons who were jobless less than 5 weeks increased by 10.7 million to 14.3 million, accounting for almost two-thirds of the unemployed. The number of unemployed persons who were jobless 5 to 14 weeks rose by 5.2 million to 7.0 million. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), at 939,000, declined by 225,000 over the month and represented 4.1 percent of the unemployed. (See table A-12.)

The labor force participation rate decreased by 2.5 percentage points over the month to 60.2 percent, the lowest rate since January 1973 (when it was 60.0 percent). Total employment, as measured by the household survey, fell by 22.4 million to 133.4 million. The employment-population ratio, at 51.3 percent, dropped by 8.7 percentage points over the month. This is the lowest rate and largest over-the-month decline in the history of the series (seasonally adjusted data are available back to January 1948). (See table A-1.)

The number of persons who usually work full time declined by 15.0 million over the month, and the number who usually work part time declined by 7.4 million. Part-time workers accounted for one-third of the over-the-month employment  decline. (See table A-9.)

The number of persons at work part time for economic reasons nearly doubled over the month to 10.9 million. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. This group includes persons who usually work full time and persons who usually work part time. (See table A-8.)

The number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job, at 9.9 million, nearly doubled in April. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the last 4 weeks or were unavailable to take a job. (See table A-1.)

Persons marginally attached to the labor force--a subset of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job--numbered 2.3 million in April, up by 855,000 over the month. These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but had not looked for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs were available for them, numbered 574,000 in April, little changed from the previous month. (See Summary table A.)

Establishment Survey Data

Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 20.5 million in April, after declining by 870,000 in March. The April over-the-month decline is the largest in the history of the series and brought employment to its lowest level since February 2011 (the series dates back to 1939). Job losses in April were widespread, with the largest employment decline occurring in leisure and hospitality. (See table B-1. For more information about how the  establishment survey and its measures were affected by the coronavirus, see the box note at the end of the news release.)

In April, employment in leisure and hospitality plummeted by 7.7 million, or 47 percent. Almost three-quarters of the decrease occurred in food services and drinking places (-5.5 million). Employment also fell in the arts, entertainment, and recreation industry (-1.3 million) and in the accommodation industry (-839,000).

Employment declined by 2.5 million in education and health services in April. In health care, employment declined by 1.4 million, led by losses in offices of dentists (-503,000), offices of physicians (-243,000), and offices of other health care practitioners (-205,000). Employment also declined in social assistance (-651,000), reflecting job losses in child day care services (-336,000) and individual and family services (-241,000). Employment in private education declined by 457,000 over the month.

Professional and business services shed 2.1 million jobs in April. Sharp losses occurred in temporary help services (-842,000) and in services to buildings and dwellings (-259,000).

In April, employment in retail trade declined by 2.1 million. Job losses occurred in clothing and clothing accessories stores (-740,000), motor vehicle and parts dealers (-345,000), miscellaneous store retailers (-264,000), and furniture and home furnishings stores (-209,000). By contrast, the component of general merchandise stores that includes warehouse clubs and supercenters gained 93,000 jobs. 

In April, manufacturing employment dropped by 1.3 million. About two-thirds of the decline was in durable goods manufacturing (-914,000), which saw losses in motor vehicles and parts (-382,000) and in fabricated metal products (-109,000). Nondurable goods manufacturing shed 416,000 jobs.

Employment in the other services industry declined by 1.3 million in April, with nearly two-thirds of the decline occurring in personal and laundry services (-797,000).

Government employment dropped by 980,000 in April. Employment in local government was down by 801,000, in part reflecting school closures. Employment also declined in state government education (-176,000).

Construction employment fell by 975,000 in April, with much of the loss in specialty trade contractors (-691,000). Job losses also occurred in construction of buildings (-206,000).

Employment fell in transportation and warehousing in April (-584,000). Transit and ground passenger transportation and air transportation lost 185,000 jobs and 141,000 jobs, respectively.

Wholesale trade shed 363,000 jobs in April, largely reflecting losses in the durable and nondurable goods components.

Employment in financial activities fell by 262,000 over the month, with the vast majority of the decline occurring in real estate and rental and leasing (-222,000).

Employment in information fell by 254,000 in April, driven by a decline in motion picture and sound recording industries (-217,000).

Mining lost 46,000 jobs in April, with most of the decline occurring in support activities for mining (-33,000).

In April, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by $1.34 to $30.01. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees increased by $1.04 to $25.12 in April. The increases in average hourly earnings largely reflect the substantial job loss among lower-paid workers; this change, along with earnings increases, put upward pressure on the average hourly earnings estimates. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 0.1 hour to 34.2 hours in April. In manufacturing, the workweek declined by 2.1 hours to 38.3 hours, and overtime declined by 0.9 hour to 2.1 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 0.1 hour to 33.5 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for February was revised down by 45,000 from +275,000 to +230,000, and the change for March was revised down by 169,000 from -701,000 to -870,000. With these revisions, employment changes in February and March combined were 214,000 lower than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the
recalculation of seasonal factors.)

_____________
The Employment Situation for May is scheduled to be released on Friday, June 5, 2020, at 8:30 a.m. (EDT).

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REACTIONS

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.

Trump campaign statement on April jobs report

“President Trump’s record of building the American economy to unprecedented heights before it was artificially interrupted by the global coronavirus pandemic is even more salient today.  He is unquestionably the Jobs President and Americans will look to him and his proven success to restore the economy to greatness.  President Trump is determined to open up the economy again and get us moving as soon as it is safely possible.  He built the economy to historic strength and he will do it a second time. In stark contrast, Joe Biden presided over the slowest economic recovery since World War II and has promised to raise taxes and burden job creators with strangling regulations under the Green New Deal. He does nothing but sit in his basement and lob political hand grenades, serving up partisan pablum and mumbling incoherent criticisms designed to score points, not help.  The choice for voters is clear: President Trump is the only one who has demonstrated that he knows how to get the economy fired up again.”

- Tim Murtaugh, Trump 2020 communications director

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Republican National Committee Research Briefing

President Trump Is Delivering Economic Relief And Saving Jobs

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IMPLEMENTED THE PROVIDER RELIEF FUND TO DELIVER BADLY NEEDED RELIEF TO THOSE IMPACTED BY THE CORONAVIRUS
PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS SIGNED AN INTERIM RELIEF BILL TO ENSURE THAT THESE SUCCESSFUL PROGRAMS CAN KEEP HELPING AMERICANS
THESE PROGRAMS HAVE HELPED MILLIONS OF BUSINESSES AND HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS THROUGHOUT AMERICA

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Biden for President
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 8, 2020

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Vice President Joe Biden on Trump’s Disastrous Economy

Good afternoon.
 
This morning, we received the worst jobs report in history. 20.5 million jobs lost last month, and an unemployment rate now 14.7 percent — the highest it’s been since the Great Depression.
 
It’s an economic disaster worse than any we have seen in decades — and it’s made all the worse, because it didn’t have to be this way.
 
Donald Trump utterly failed to prepare for this pandemic and delayed in taking the necessary steps to safeguard our nation against the near-worst-case-economic scenario we are now living. 
 
COVID-19 caused a massive economic challenge. But this crisis hit us harder, and will last longer, because Donald Trump spent the last three years undermining the core pillars of our economic strength.
 
Many small businesses have closed because of stay-at-home orders. But a lot of them won't open again because they do not have a cushion due to three years of Trump's policies that reward the biggest companies.
 
Yes, many have lost their jobs because of this crisis — but we are seeing so many proud families forced to endure epic lines for food boxes in football stadium parking lots because Donald Trump has spent three years tilting the playing field to the wealthy, and not the middle class.
 
Trump has loved to crow about the great economy he built. But when the crisis hit, it became clear who that economy has been built to serve. Not workers. Not the middle class. Not families.
 
Trump’s economic agenda has three unmistakable failings; failings that have been present since day one, but are coming into sharp relief in the current crisis:
 
First, Donald Trump’s main measure of economic progress is the state of the stock market.

It’s the only metric he values, so it’s the only lens through which he sees our economy.

For the past three years, even as Americans have had to work harder than ever to pay their bills, he’s said the economy was “great” because the stock market was up. 
 
He irresponsibly downplayed and delayed action on the virus to protect the Dow Jones Average, a choice that has so far cost tens of thousands of American lives and millions of American jobs.
 
Make no mistake: it doesn’t matter how much the market rebounds. As long as there are millions of unemployed people struggling to get by — we won’t be anywhere near bouncing back.
 
Second, his entire economic strategy is focused on helping the wealthy and big corporations.

Just imagine what we could be doing now with the $2 trillion in tax cuts that Trump delivered for his rich friends as his first priority.

Imagine how much better a position we’d be in right now if — instead of Donald Trump cheering on corporations that spent hundreds of billions buying back their stock — those corporations were using that money to keep workers on their payrolls. 
 
Imagine if, instead of providing incentives to shift jobs overseas – he had ensured we were investing in manufacturing at home.
 
Imagine how much more resilient our small businesses might be right now if – rather than repeatedly trying to slash the Small Business Administration’s budget – Trump had invested in making them stronger. 
 
Imagine if instead of fighting tooth and nail to take away people’s health insurance, he’d invested in expanding access, so that families didn’t worry that a visit to the hospital would put their finances at risk.
 
Third, Donald Trump claimed he would fight for the forgotten middle class – and as soon as he got into office, he forgot them. 
 
He’s been President for more than three years, but hasn’t yet followed through on his core economic campaign promises to middle class voters.
 
He promised to work with Congress to pass a bill to limit offshoring of jobs. He promised to create $1 trillion worth of new infrastructure jobs. He promised to expand child care support. 
 
He said it would all happen before May 2017. It’s now May 2020 and not one of these promises has materialized.
 
Instead, he’s run the same playbook that has hollowed out our economy time and again over the past four decades.
 
It always ends up the same way. The rich get richer, the powerful get more power, and everyone else gets told they just need to work harder.
 
We’ve heard it before — and we’re not buying it.

And if you need proof that Trump’s policies were a failure even before this virus hit, just compare the first 35 months of Trump’s presidency to the last 35 months of the Obama-Biden Administration, hiring was slower and real wages grew more slowly too.
 
Trump was already well into the process of hollowing out the good economy we left him long before the first case of coronavirus.

The numbers looked good, but underneath the numbers, things were eroding. 

But this pandemic has laid bare exactly how much damage Trump has done in just over three years.
 
Because Donald Trump has gotten the virus response wrong, the jobs and unemployment numbers are just the beginning. His mistakes will also mean it takes more time to recover from this.
 
We’re already seeing the tell-tale hallmarks of Trump-o-nomics in the way he is implementing the crisis response efforts: no strings, no oversight, no accountability.
 
I’ve started to think of it as the Corrupt Recovery.
 
First, Trump made sure we didn’t have an empowered Inspector General to oversee all of this. 

And now, we seeing reports that loan money went to Trump’s donors, political allies, and companies with Trump-connected lobbyists.

Here’s how it worked: Trump’s Treasury Department allowed corporations with connections to go right to the front of the line — they got concierge service. 

Meanwhile the mom and pop shops that needed help most got shut out.

More than 40 percent of the initial funding designed to support small businesses—didn’t go to real small businesses at all.
 
The single largest recipient of small-business money was a hotel executive and a major Trump donor.

The Trump Administration let him exploit the loophole to get $59 million in help, and he’s only giving it back now because the press found out.

And, who knows what else we’d find if the Trump Administration would stop hiding the full list of businesses who received help. 

This is your money they’re getting.
 
We’re reading press stories that the Trump Administration is allowing big corporations that take money to lay off their workers, while other big companies are laying off workers then pay-out millions to shareholders.
 
How hard is it for Trump to say that if you are a major corporation and you are going to receive taxpayer money, you must first use it to take care of your workers?

But it turns out corruption is a feature of the Trump economic agenda, not a bug.
 
He will pick his wealthy friends, his corporate cronies, over working families every time.

I say it’s time we pick a different way.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be laying out a detailed plan for the right kind of economic recovery. Today, let me outline just a few key principles.
 
It starts with rebuilding the backbone of this country: a stronger, more inclusive, more resilient middle class – a middle class that can withstand the next public health crisis or whatever else comes our way.
 
It’s time we make sure everyone gets a fair shot at success, not just the Mar-a-Lago crowd.

Since the very first days of my campaign, I’ve had a simple message:

Wall Street and CEOs didn’t build this country. The middle class built this country. Ordinary women and men who are capable of doing extraordinary things when given half a chance. They built the country. 
 
That’s who I believe in. That’s who I’m in this race to fight for.
 
Who is out there on the front lines of this crisis? Who are the workers that are literally carrying this nation on their backs?
 
The doctors and nurses and other health care workers. The EMTs and firefighters and police. The grocery store clerks and the meat packers and the farmers. The delivery drivers and the mass transit workers.
 
And these heroes are all too often the lowest-paid and the least appreciated members of our society.
 
But this crisis is showing us what is essential. And, I think it’s time we reward the people who actually make this country work.
 
I do believe that from this moment, from this crisis, we have the opportunity to not just rebuild our economy—but transform it.
 
To make our economy more resilient for whatever comes our way in the future. 

Making sure everyone has paid sick leave and child care support. 
 
Remaking our system of unemployment insurance into employment insurance, to help keep people in their jobs.

Putting millions and millions of people to work building the new, green economy that will position us to own the 21st century.

Making sure we’re producing here at home the machines and equipment we need to fight the pandemic and ensure public health. 
 
Guaranteeing an education that equips you to succeed,and access to high-quality, affordable health care. 
 
We can restore the basic bargain that used to exist in this country. The bargain was that if you contributed to the success of an enterprise, you shared in the rewards.
 
And the way we will do that is by empowering our workers. It means encouraging unionization and collective bargaining. It means more protections to ensure fair pay, over-time compensation, worker-safety, and a secure retirement.
 
We can insist that big corporations - which we've bailed out twice in 12 years – set up and take responsibility for their workers and communities. They have to step up to do that.
 
We can rip out the race-based inequities that infect every part of our society— from the pollution being pumped into the air and water in communities of color to the health care treatment they receive.
 
I’ll have more to say on all this in the weeks ahead, but here’s what it comes down to: we can choose who our economy, our government,
and our country works for.
 
Just the wealthy — or everyone else as well. All of us together. All of us together.
 
That’s the choice we must make - all of us together - this November. It could not be more stark what the choice is.
 
I’d like to end today by saying thank you to all of our front line workers who are working day in and day out to keep our nation afloat during this crisis. And who are risking their personal health and safety in the process.
 
And to everyone, to everyone who is struggling with this virus who I talk to or grieving a lost loved one or losing sleep worrying about how you are going to make ends meet for another week — I want to offer my heartfelt condolences.
 
But I know that we will get through this. We’ll get through it together. I know because I know the American spirit, and the American character. We’re seeing it on display every day.
 
The proof that there’s nothing, nothing we cannot accomplish when we stand together—one nation, united in purpose, taking care of our neighbors, committing to get the job done.
 
That’s what has seen us through every moment of crisis in our past — it will see us through again today. It will empower us to write the future we want for our country and our children. 

There’s no quit in America. None at all. We’re going to get through this. 
 
Thank you, and God bless you.

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Democratic National Committee