A normal jobs report would look at 1-month and 12-month changes jobs and call it a day. In the pandemic landscape of today, however, the focus is on how many jobs were lost initially and how well the recovery is going. The underlying data are reported monthly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), …Read more
The U.S. continues to recapture jobs lost at the onset of the pandemic in March and April, but that recovery is slowing and unequal across the geographic landscape. Seasonally adjusted job numbers by state, as reported monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), found that 40 states added jobs from August to September, 10 …Read more
The increased amount of time we are spending at home makes the residence more intrinsically valuable than at any time in people’s lives today. Coupled with record-low interest rates, new and existing home sales and refinance lending volumes continue to grow – with total residential lending now forecast by Fannie Mae to hit a record …Read more
Jobs are everything to an economy. Period. Ordinarily when analyzing the monthly employment statistics, the focus is on growth from the prior month and in the past 12-months. That all changed in the months since the pandemic. Key metrics post-pandemic (up until now) included: the total percentage of jobs lost since February (the baseline prior …Read more
Jobs are everything to the economy and the ultimate demand for real estate. Period. Unfortunately, not one single state has yet to recover the total number of jobs lost since February 2020 – the baseline prior to the pandemic. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) monthly reports employment data for the nation, states and Metropolitan …Read more
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported today the U.S. recaptured another 1.37 million jobs in August 2020, nicely above the 1.2 million consensus from economists polled by MarketWatch. The unemployment rate fell significantly from 10.2 percent in July to a preliminary 8.4 percent, better than even the year-end expectation by the Federal Reserve. U.S. …Read more
This monthly analysis of jobs differs from previous versions that included both Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and Metropolitan Divisions (which are subsets of the MSAs). Only the MSA level data are included in this blog. Data are based on seasonally adjusted monthly employment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Jobs peaked in the U.S. …Read more
Ordinarily the key metrics focused on each month when analyzing employment data are the percent change in the total number of jobs in the prior 12-months and perhaps in the past one-month. In the current Coronavirus world that changes to how many more jobs need to be brought back or recovered just to return to …Read more
Despite 10 million more unemployed workers in July 2020 compared to February of this year, existing home sales posted the best sales level seen since December 2006 — the peak of the housing bubble. Existing home sales rocketed up 24.7 percent in July 2020 on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) versus the prior month …Read more
As the pandemic progresses, it appears more evident that the housing sector is providing buoyancy to the U.S. economy as record low interest rates drive housing demand and reduce monthly payments for millions of households able to refinance their home mortgages. Following is a summary of the latest August 2020 forecasts from Fannie Mae and …Read more