Tales Of The Trump Depression, Con't

Turns out sending Americans back to work for six months into a pandemic in order to save the economy not only fails to stop the pandemic, it also fails to save the economy.

 

Hiring around the U.S. slowed last sharply month as the coronavirus battered the economy, the Labor Department said Friday. Employers added 245,000 jobs in November — the slowest pace of monthly job growth since April, and about half what economists had expected.

Payroll gains last month amount a sharp drop from the 610,000 jobs added in October and 710,000 in September. The nation's unemployment rate, which has steadily declined since peaking at nearly 15% in April, ticked down to 6.7%. But it fell for a bad reason — 400,000 people stopped looking for work, meaning they were no longer counted as unemployed.

Normally, adding nearly a quarter million jobs in a single month would signify healthy growth, but the economy faces a massive jobs deficit, with about 10 million fewer jobs since April. Since then, 4 million people have dropped out of the workforce altogether, meaning they are not working or looking for work.

"With the amount of pressure that the escalating pandemic is putting on the labor market right now, it's pretty clear that a double-dip recession is a very real possibility," Steve Rick, chief economist at CUNA Mutual Group, said in a note. "For those who have been out of a job since March or early Spring, this extended period of unemployment will make it even more difficult to find new, stable work."

"[T]he bottom line is that job growth has slowed markedly, and this report demonstrates yet again that it's not possible to separate the economy from the virus," Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in a note to investors.

Manufacturing and construction each added 27,000 jobs last month. The retail sector lost 34,000 jobs, offset by a gain of 145,000 jobs in transportation and warehousing, driven by a shift to ecommerce.

 

The right-hand side of the "V" in that "V-shaped rocket recovery" the Trumpies blather on about has broken off halfway up and is now dangling like a busted antenna on a 50-year old pair of TV rabbit ears. It's going to fall off next month. After that, if Mitch McConnell is still Senate leader, we're in for a catastrophic 2021.

Until Republicans stop sabotaging our COVID-19 efforts, the economy will never improve, and now that Biden's going to be President, they have no reason to stop doing either.

 

Remember that in the months ahead.