Just a quick update on COVID: New cases have seemly stabilized but its too high. Hospitalizations are only 108 away from a record and deaths are picking up.
Hopefully the new restrictions slow cases down. Otherwise, we will have some serious problems with the health case system.
The US Census Pulse Surveys give us good data to look at employment between employment reports. This week, the survey suggests we lost **4** million jobs.
This is due to the resurgence of COVID. Here’s a graph of hospitalizations (inverted) compared to employment based on the Census Pulse Surveys.
The survey peaked at almost 135 million employed persons as of Jun 16th. Since then – through July 14th – employment is down to almost 128 million jobs.
You can see the strong correlation with hospitalizations. Given hospitalizations hit a record high yesterday, I expect employment to continue to fall in the next survey.
Given the extra employment ends this week as well as the end of other support, the economy could suffer greatly in the next few weeks.