Extraordinary Employment

July payrolls rose a strong 943,000, and June’s number was revised up 88,000 to 938,000, pushing the unemployment rate down from 5.9% to 5.4%! This suggests that through mid-July the Delta variant had no negative impact. Moreover, the broadest measure of unemployment dropped from 9.8% to 9.2%, just 2.2 points higher than pre-Covid. The only negative, the labor force participation rate rose by just a tenth of a point.