More Permanently Temporary Job Losses

The headline number says good things – unemployment rate is under 8% again. (A lot of this is because participation in the economy is down.) However, the bigger issue is another 350k jobs are permanently lost.

Here’s the updated graph comparing the permanent job losses of the last 3 recessions.

We are halfway to the total permanent job losses of the last recession, which was the worst since the great depression. With Disney laying off 28,000 and maybe 100,000 airline jobs at risk, I expect permanent job losses to continue to increase.

Remember, permanent job losses are much harder to bounce back from…

Permanent Job Losses Past Tech Recession

Pretty good jobs number this morning – excluding the fact we still have missing millions of jobs from February and labor participation is way down.

The real concerning part – and what I’ve mentioned many times in my econ talks – is that temporary is becoming permanent. Here’s a comparison of permanent job losses of the last 3 recessions.

There was a large increase in permanent job losses and we have now equaled the tech recession.

These jobs will take a long time to come back and will stall a recover even once we get good testing and/or a vaccine.