Dow rallies more than 700 points after record surge in U.S. jobs
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Anecdotally, I can attest that the married couples in our suburb are desperate to go out on date-nights again. I imagine that's similar everywhere - and the news certainly confirms that people aren't afraid of the virus (even if they should be). ...and since restaurants are desperate to re-open to pay the bills, it seems clear that they'd want to re-hire staff.
The real question is whether the re-openings and/or the protests will cause a large enough 2nd peak of the virus to cause additional closures over the summer - or impact the expectation of closures again in the fall.
EDIT: Of course, some hedge funds that were leveraged something like 100x on risk parity and correlation blew up almost instantly and caused a momentary liquidity crisis, but that was bound to happen :)
It came from adding up numbers on [0], and I also came up with about 19.7% - so the unemployment rate dropping from 14.7% in Apr to 13.3% in May [1] is very surprising.
The aftershocks are going to go on for a while. Evictions, pay cuts, restrictions on restaurant capacity in the reopenings, bankruptcies, collapses of a bunch of small businesses.
In particular, it does not capture the impact of COVID-19 beyond its impact on GDP source data and relevant economic reports that have already been released. It does not anticipate the impact of COVID-19 on forthcoming economic reports beyond the standard internal dynamics of the model."
So, if Bob made on average $800 per week, and his state pays UI at 60%, his state UI would be $480 / week leaving him $320 short per week. The additional federal money should have paid $320 / week to get him back to 100% of his $800 / week average.
Want to recover an economy? Literally just give people who don't have any money some money. It's that simple. And in a few years when everything settles down and there's been formal studies, I think expanded UI will prove it.
It's easy to prop up the stock price of a business, but if that company is still operating in a harsh economic environment, they still might need to cut staff and production, or could even go out of business.
At this point, I really have no idea how bad things really are for businesses. Our clients seems cautiously optimistic: most are spending money; some have budgets allocated for projects, but are holding off pulling the trigger for a few months; and a few have cancelled projects. The nation is also seeing layoffs in non-retail sectors, but again, it's hard to say if this is because companies are using COVID as cover for something they've been wanting to do, or if this is the start of the downward spiral.
My out-of-my-ass prediction is we see another, more substantial market retraction in September-October which has more staying power. And I don't think the cause will be COVID-related (but that's what the media will report), but instead will be the result of a collapse in supply chains across multiple industries as China-US relations further deteriorate, hampering the ability for manufacturing companies to buy raw materials combined with continuing bankruptcies in the agricultural sector.
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan seems likely as well, especially given the domestic strife in the US that has leaders calling for military show-of-force. Weak US military morale / power struggles within the military, combined with a focus of attention inward should provide an opportunity for the Chinese to act unopposed.
People have adjusted to situations that are not ideal. People will have different comfort levels over time, and they will attempt to reconcile those two things. To imply that a life without Sunday brunch is somehow lesser or worse is myopic.
It is worse. Claiming otherwise would be arguing that immunocompromised, sedentary, etc folks are just as privileged as myself.
Ultimately people are making compromises and finding ways to live within them. People do this every day, with or without pandemics.
Even then I'm aware we're still completely in the dark of what long term effects this might have. Do you have any worries about that? That along with the viral load research makes me pause when people are itching to just get "back to normal."
Nope. I don't have time for (what I see as) irrational paranoia. I've judged the risk to be small enough where if that happens to me, it's OK.
One killed 17-50 million people in two years, the other is not yet known to even infect animals.
1) You're in a high-risk demographic: 70+, have health problems, lack access to high-level health care facilities.
2) You interact with people who are in high-risk demographics: nursing home staff, service industry where your customers are elderly, medical staff.
3) You want to support broader transmission mitigation. Mask-everwhere is the most obvious action here, but limiting high-risk activities helps too.
It's easy to forget that tragedy of the commons also means opportunity for the individual.
Some of us, despite not being in (1) or (2), feel good about doing what we individually can to avoid another broad lockdown. Decreasing R_t through personal choices is going to be a big component of the aggregate number.
I do what I do to mitigate the spread, not because I expect you to do the same, but because it's what I feel is right.
Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.
For example, on one French aircraft carrier, 60 percent of sailors were infected (none died and only two out of 1,074 infected sailors required intensive care). https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2020/05/covid-19-aboard...
I'm not happy about the "copypasta" insult though. None of my writing is plagiarized, arguments that are not original to me are called out, and I spent a lot of time and effort tracking down the soundest supporting references I could find.
Pure speculation, even when proven by time, is worthless.
> Pure speculation, even when proven by time, is worthless.
I can't agree. This essentially argues that all intuition is worthless unless it can be explained. Maybe true in a structured debate, but surely not in life.
1. Respiratory viruses typically evolve to become attenuated after jumping between species, and this new one will move to the "sweet spot" where all other human coronaviruses proliferate, if it becomes endemic.
2. 40-60% of people may have some level of pre-existing immunity due to previous exposure to other cold coronaviruses. This finding is coming up again and again in microbiology preprints, and it fits most observations.
Check my bio for the full essay, which actually turns into a long rant about the state of science in general.
From your bio you have zero expertise in this area (beyond, I suppose, that you follow some narratives on Twitter). Your predictions are literally worthless noise.
Hacker News is a conversation place, an internet watercooler. People want and need to have conversation on things they aren't experts on. Users certainly don't have to be experts to post here—that would be an entirely different kind of forum.
"literally worthless noise" is calling names in the sense that the HN guidelines use the term: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
"From your bio you have zero expertise in this area" is crossing into using someone's personal details as ammunition in an argument. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
"beyond, I suppose, that you follow some narratives on Twitter" is a nasty personal swipe.
Please don't do that kind of thing on HN. If you review the site guidelines you'll notice that the intended spirit is quite different.
ADP's report has some revised methods, too: https://adpemploymentreport.com/common/docs/ADP-NER-FAQ.pdf
https://www.bls.gov/cps/employment-situation-covid19-faq-may...
> In the establishment survey, workers who are paid by their employer for all or any part of the pay period including the 12th of the month are counted as employed, even if they were not actually at their jobs.
> The household survey is conducted by the Census Bureau and normally includes both in-person and telephone interviews, with the majority of interviews collected by telephone. Interviewing for the household survey began on May 17th, 2020. ...
> In May about three-quarters of the interviewers at these centers worked remotely to collect data by telephone.
> In April, BLS made changes to the establishment survey net birth-death model used in the estimation process. These changes were continued in May. However, after further research, BLS extended the estimation modifications back to March. This change contributed to the revision for March.
> During their review of household survey data for May, BLS staff tested for outliers to determine whether any changes were needed to the seasonal adjustment models. BLS staff determined that, as in April, the vast majority of household survey data series had significant outliers in May. Therefore, BLS staff made adjustments to the models used in seasonal adjustment processing to better account for these outliers.
> Of the 8.4 million employed people not at work during the survey reference week in May 2020, 5.4 million people were included in the “other reasons” category, much higher than the average of 549,000 for May 2016–2019 (not seasonally adjusted). BLS analysis of the underlying data suggests that this group included workers affected by the pandemic response who should have been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff. Such a misclassification is an example of nonsampling error and can occur when respondents misunderstand questions or interviewers record answers incorrectly. BLS and the Census Bureau are investigating why this misclassification error continues to occur and are making changes for the June collection. (See item 14 below.)
If anything, the first point would mean that the prior jobless numbers were higher than they should have been.
> If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to “other reasons” (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical May) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis). However, according to usual practice, the data from the household survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reclassify survey responses.
If you apply the correction, the rate would be 16.3%.
Anyway these job reports always get revised months later when more complete data is gathered.
Especially shocking that retail hiring would pick up as protestors shut down streets and rioters loot and burn down retail businesses.
I certainly do not share the optimism of the participants in the market. I think many people are in a state of denial and willfully ignorant optimism, which is understandable since people get irrational with their own money at risk (I've been there). The US (and arguably the world) is going through a lot of pain right now and it's tempting to look at this article (or any sign of hope, no matter how trivial) and think "everything is fine."
^^ Take a moment to reflect on the above - did it upset you? Are you smashing your keyboard in reply? Before you do, consider: that's exactly how rational markets become irrational, how markets crashed in 2000-2002 and 2008, and how they'll boom and crash in the future - unchecked emotional reaction to fear. If you need to take it out, just downvote and get it out of your system.
[1] https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/nothing-has-happened-shock...
Odd that 10% of jobs were dental office workers. I can see why they’d rehire staff for PPP but why aren’t other healthcare specialties similarly overrepresented?
So if someone says "they are fake numbers" they should be ready to corroborate that with evidence, it's not on the people who believe the institutions to prove that they are correct.
If you think the data is wrong or deceptive, then you need to provide evidence of that.
But I think "pure cynicism" is too dismissive for an administration that is somewhat open about wanting to keep numbers lower than their reality and fires inspectors general without proper cause (though DOL IG left by choice). That said, the career professionals in DOL would absolutely leak if they were being told to fudge this data. That's why I have basically no doubts.
It's worth adding, there are lots of unique categorical employment issues that have presented themselves during the pandemic that can have large impacts on numbers. There's plenty you could imagine political officials arguing with the career staff about for legit reasons. If this was happening and affecting numbers to a large degree, I think we'd be hearing leaks about that, too.
This assumes that the Department of Labor is taking direction from the administration. There's no indication of that.
Most of the economic forecasting models have to be using historically-fit models.
Which is to say, they're giving predictions of what would happen if all of their data sources had experienced these changes in normal economic times.
But it's a bit of an open question as to what happens if we artificially demand substantial economic activity stop on a dime (via lockdown).
My gut says that we're going to see mitigated impact, for the simple reason that customers are a herd, and move gradually. They're going to tend to want to behave as they did before the lockdown (see: resistance to masks and other changes!) as long as they didn't lose their jobs. Which is turn should restart the economy fairly solidly.
What's required for doomsday scenarios would be for people to start behaving as though a depression were imminent. That is to say: limiting spending, hoarding cash, withdrawing money from banks, businesses putting off capital purchases.
Of those, the last is the only thing I'm aware of that's been happening. So we'll be in risky-but-fine land for awhile.
> If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to “other reasons” (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical May) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis). However, according to usual practice, the data from the household survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reclassify survey responses.
If you apply the correction, the rate would be 16.3%.
Did Canada commit reporting fraud as well? Their big May jobs report matches up with the US, on a population ratio basis, and given how tightly linked the two economies are.