Sunday, August 23, 2020

The Global Jobless Recovery

The United States added 1.76 million Jobs in July 2020, compared to a consensus estimate of 1.48 million.

Headline official unemployment rates are misleading due to different subsidies and furloughed jobs.

Most leading economies posted PMIs in expansion in July, and the global index pointed to a return to growth both in services and manufacturingBut companies continued to shed jobs after three months of reopening.

If we analyze the job component of global PMIs published by IHS Markit, we can see that all sectors except three continued to destroy jobs in July 2020 as firms faced overcapacity and weak growth in sales.

The only sectors that created jobs in July on a global level were Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology, Healthcare Services, and Real Estate.

A global PMI recovery with widespread job destruction shows us that most of the headline PMIs simply reflect a month-on-month bounce from depressed levels, not a return to precovid industry levels.

It must liberalize and cut red tape to boost job creation, because the recovery is stalling in many developed and emerging economies, and copying failed interventionist measures will not bring employment back.

https://mises.org/wire/global-jobless-recovery 

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