Job Creation

No we are not talking about the pandemic here. We are actually referring to the May jobs report, which shows almost 560,000 jobs created. This number was seen as disappointing. If you look at it from a year-to-date standpoint, we have added close to 2.5 million jobs this year—or an average of just under 500,000 per month.

We also have to remember that the first few months of the year coincided with a spike in Coronavirus cases. As the cases decline and the economy opens up we believe that the number should increase in the second half of the year. Yes, we understand that over 22 million jobs were lost during the pandemic, and we have recovered less than 15 million of these jobs. If we continue at the pace of 500,000 per month, the recovery will not be complete for well over a year—especially when you consider that normal job growth would have created another four to five million jobs last year and this year.

Thus, the recovery number is more like 27 million jobs. Should we really be disappointed in adding 560,000 jobs last month? If we keep adding 500,000 jobs per month, we will eventually get to where we need to be. However, if job creation accelerates from here, we may be positive more quickly than the analysts are projecting.