More jobs are disappearing for good, dashing hopes of a rapid economic rebound.
Tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs in the coronavirus recession, but for many of them the news is getting even worse: Their positions are going away forever.
Permanent losses have so far made up only a fraction of the jobs that have vanished since states began shutting down their economies in March, with the vast majority of unemployed workers classified as on temporary layoff. But those numbers are steadily increasing — reaching 2.9 million in June — as companies start to move from temporary layoffs to permanent cuts. The number is widely expected to rise further when the Labor Department reports July data on Friday.
It sure looks like we lost a whole lot of jobs.
This recession has been really confused, because what we had was really a suppression where we told everybody to stay home — and that wasn’t really job loss,” said Betsey Stevenson, a former chief economist at the Labor Department and a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration. “The real question is, when you end the suppression, how many jobs are left? And boy, it sure looks like we lost a whole lot of jobs.
Even when consumers want to go out to eat or travel again, “That’s going to take a long time to turn into job benefits if you’ve had massive amounts of small business closures there,” Ozimek said.