The Unemployment Numbers -- Breitbart News Service -- June 4, 2021

Job growth fell short of expectations for the second month running in May. Forecasters had predicted the economy would gin up 671,000 jobs following the disappointing 266,000 in April. Instead, job growth came in at just 559,000. Even the slightly better than expected downtick in the unemployment rate to 5.8 percent, versus the 5.9 percent expected, was disappointing because it was rooted in a contraction of the labor force.

Prior to the release of the May figures, hopes were running high that perhaps last month's reading was wrong. The economy has been shifting violently for over a year, and it seemed plausible that there might have been some miscounting or undercounting. Can the Department of Labor accurately count businesses that are suddenly permitted to go from 25 percent capacity to 100 percent? But those hopes were largely dashed when the revision added just 12,000 jobs for April, and most of those were actually government jobs. Weirdly, the government quite frequently undercounts how many new government workers are hired in any given month.

Beyond the headline numbers on job growth and unemployment, Friday's data provided further evidence that the economy is afflicted not by a lack of demand for workers but a constraint on supply. Labor force participation shrank in May, ticking down from 61.7 percent to 61.6 percent. And it has been stuck near those levels since June of 2020, despite the reopening that should have been drawing workers back into jobs. Average hourly wages are rising at a swift rate, as are average work week hours. So businesses are paying more per hour and asking workers to work longer. In May, the average work week was 34.9 hours, close to the record of 35 hours set in January

Our favorite measure of supply constraint, however, is teenage unemployment.  

This hit the lowest level since 1953, as the Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics newsletter pointed out. (Eddie Cochran's hit Summertime Blues was released five years later, when teenage unemployment had climbed to 16 percent). 

The share of teenagers working rose to 33.2 percent, the highest since 2008. That's great news if you are a teenager looking for work, but it also indicates an extreme tightness in the labor market. So why are so many employers turning to youngsters to fill jobs? Enhanced unemployment benefits. Teenagers are not being paid an extra $300 a week in unemployment benefits, so they are actually available to hire.

The good news is that over 20 states have decided to end the $300 bonus in the coming weeks. That should restore supply to the labor market over the summer, which could lead to some very big upside surprises in the employment reports in July and August.

– Alex Marlow & John Carney
Breitbart News Network

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Duolingo

Sophia and I are taking Spanish lessons together on Duolingo. I'm pretty sure I make more errors than she does; she often corrects me.

I am quite amazed how mjuch we learn in so little time. 

We have not missed one day of instruction in 245 days -- no more than ten minutes / day. 

Today, surfing through the news, I came across this headline and I would have passed right be it ... except "abuela" was one of the first words Sophia and I learned. 

For the life of me, two things I don't understand:

• why elementary schools don't "require" Duolingo Spanish fifteen minutes each day. No testing, no exams, no "nothing"; simply letting the class "run" through two or three Duolingo lessons (fifteen minutes max) each day; and,
• why anybody, without a medical contraindication, would not get a Covid-19 vaccination.

I "refused" to get the vaccine until it was as easy as getting vaccinated while in the military. All that signing up on the internet for an appointment; then waiting two or three weeks for the appointment; then driving fifteen miles to the vaccination site; and, then waiting in line for half an hour. Made no sense.

Last week, I walked into our local grocery store, walked over to the pharmacy, no appointment, no waiting, and got my first of two shots. In three weeks, I'll get the second and that will be that. If the data is correct, after 100s of million of doses suggesting this thing is trending toward 95% effective, it will be one of the most effective vaccines ever. 

It took four years for Spanish flu to burn itself out; no vaccine ever developed. Covid-19 -- in countries where the vaccine is readily available, Covid-19 is "history" within a year.