Both Canada and the United States today reported further significant employment gains for the month of August, though that's not the message the media in either country seem to want people to hear. Let's look at the data first, and then consider the media reaction.
According to Statistics Canada, employment rose by 246,000 in the month, with the unemployment rate falling to 10.2 percent. Together with the very strong gains posted in June and July, the August data mean that the economy has recovered about two-thirds of the jobs lost to the pandemic in March and April, though that still leaves the number of persons employed about one million below its February peak. Strength in full time jobs (up by 206,000 in the month), a rising participation rate and a fall in the number of persons working from home all reinforce the message that the labour market is improving.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that US non-farm payrolls rose by 1.4 million in the month, dropping the unemployment rate to 8.4 percent. This was a stronger outcome than analysts had predicted, although it still leaves total US payrolls some 11.5 million below their pre-pandemic peak. As was the case in Canada, rising full-time employment and a rising participation rate underscore the improvement in the jobs market.
And yet, what do we see in the media? Here is the report from the CBC website on the Canadian data, and here is how the US data are reported by CNN. In both cases, the emphasis is much more the extent to which employment remains below its peak, rather than on the positive aspects of the August data. Check out the first sentence of the CNN report: "The US job market remains in a deep hole during the ongoing pandemic, and now the recovery is losing some of its momentum". That "recovery is slowing" theme was the first thing the "Chyron" on CNN conveyed to viewers when the data came out. It seems a sour and churlish way to report a rise in employment that is one of the strongest ever recorded in any single month, beaten only by the outsize gains in June and July.
No reputable analyst has suggested that the strong gains seen in June and July could possibly persist, so the fact that the US job gains were above analyst expectations might have been a good point to emphasize. It is hard to think of anyone, whether journalist or expert, who was foreseeing such a strong, early rebound in employment back when the pandemic was laying waste to the economy in March and April. Well, there was one person who said it -- and, the Lord help us all, that person was Donald Trump.
The tone of reporting on the economy, and on employment in particular, is important right now, because we are probably about to enter a phase in which the situation will become trickier, even if there is no major "second wave" of COVID-19. The job gains seen in both Canada and the United States in the past three months largely represent the steady loosening of the lockdowns imposed in both countries in an effort to control the pandemic. That process has further to run, but will inevitably end soon.
Looking ahead, we are facing a period in which the structural damage caused by the pandemic will start to become much more apparent. Airlines on both sides of the border are readying mass layoffs, amid predictions that the industry will not fully recover for four years. Small businesses that have hung on through the summer season may not survive as the seasons change. Think, for example, of all the restaurants here in Canada that have opened patios to serve their clients safely in these warmer months, but will soon be forced to fall back on interior spaces with strictly reduced seating capacity as the frosts start to arrive.
There is likely to be plenty of gloomy economic news for the media to obsess over in the coming months. It would be nice if they would allow themselves (and their audiences) to celebrate the better news as well, as long as it lasts.
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