Showing results 1 - 7 of 7
| Jason Furman | Willie Powell
June 2, 2021, Opinion: "By April 2021 robust consumer spending and strong investment by businesses and homebuilders in the United States had driven total demand nearly back to its pre-pandemic trend. At the same time, employment was about 7 percent below its trend (or 10 million workers short). Even though hours and productivity of employed workers were up, that was still not enough to enable the United States to produce as much as the economy…
| Jason Furman | Willie Powell
June 4, 2021, Opinion: "The US economy added 559,000 jobs in May, similar to the average of 533,000 jobs over the previous three months and much faster than the pace in the three months before that. This still leaves the economy 10 million jobs short of its trend. At the same time the unemployment rate fell to 5.8 percent, but labor force participation also fell slightly and is lower than it was last summer. The “realistic” unemployment rate (…
| Jason Furman | Willie Powell
May 17, 2021, Opinion: "he US economy lost a net of 8 million jobs between February 2020 and April 2021. Agreement is growing that people not actively seeking employment (inadequate labor supply) have been playing a major role in the slow recovery, as evidenced by factors including record job openings, the largest wage increases in decades, and other signs of a tighten labor market than would generally be expected given the still low levels of…
| Jason Furman | Willie Powell
May 7, 2021, Opinion: "The United States added 266,000 jobs in April while the unemployment rate rose slightly to 6.1 percent with the realistic unemployment rate, which adjusts for misclassification and the unusual decline in labor force participation, falling to 7.6 percent as more people entered the labor market. The economy was still 10 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic trend in April with the employment rate down 3.2 percentage points…
| Jason Furman | Willie Powell
March 5, 2021, Opinion: "The labor market improved in February 2021 as employers added 379,000 jobs, leaving the economy at 11.9 million jobs below its pre-pandemic trend. At the same time the unemployment rate fell to 6.2 percent. Throughout the pandemic the official unemployment rate has been kept down by a misclassification error and the unusually large withdrawal of millions of people from the workforce. Our estimate of the realistic…
| Jason Furman | Willie Powell
February 5, 2021, Opinion: "The labor market was essentially unchanged at the start of 2021 as employers added 49,000 jobs in January. Overall, the economy is 11.6 million jobs below its pre-pandemic trend with the unemployment rate elevated and the employment rate having fallen even more as millions of people have left the labor force. Unusually, while the unemployment rate has fallen steadily from 11.1 percent in June 2020 to 6.3 percent this…
| Jason Furman | Willie Powell
January 28, 2021, Opinion: "The US economy contracted 3.5 percent on an annual basis in 2020, the largest contraction for any full year since the demobilization from World War II in 1946. The large decline in annual GDP reflects the very low amount of economic activity that took place in the second quarter. With the relatively rapid rebound in the second half of the year, the economy was down 2.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the…