Posted January 7, 2021 at 3:41 pm by Elise Gould

What to watch on jobs day: Little to no improvement in December and huge losses over 2020

Jobs day on Friday will not only give us a read on the labor market for December, but it will also give us a sense of the devastating economy of 2020 and the economy President-elect Biden is walking into. Overall job growth for December will likely continue to trend toward zero, with some chance of employment actually falling. At the same time, rising COVID-19 caseloads, hospitalizations, and deaths means our health and economic woes are far from over. President-elect Biden is inheriting an exceedingly troubled economy with millions of families just trying to stay afloat. Over the Trump administration’s term, more jobs were lost than gained—there are 541,000 fewer jobs in the U.S. economy than when he took office in January 2016. And not only does President-elect Biden enter his first term in a disastrous economy, he also inherits a litany of anti-worker policy decisions from his predecessor who squandered the labor market strength he inherited.

The figure below provides a decent picture of the employment situation over the last year. In January and February, we saw solid job growth with gains of 214,000 and 251,000, respectively. After COVID-19 hit, federal legislation expanded unemployment insurance, increasing both eligibility and weekly payments, making it financially viable for millions of workers to safely stay home while public health officials assessed the situation. However, businesses that were shuttered in the interest of public health received insufficient federal economic support to keep paying their workers even as they remained safely at home. The U.S. economy experienced losses in March and April of 1.4 million and 20.8 million jobs, respectively, losses the likes of which we hadn’t experienced in modern history. Millions were on temporary layoff and once states started opening back up, some of those were rehired. We saw a significant bounce back in May and June with 2.7 million and 4.9 million jobs added, respectively. Unfortunately, over the succeeding five months, job growth has rapidly slowed as federal relief expired and the virus surged: 1.8 million in July down to 1.5 million in August then 711,000, 610,000, and a paltry 245,000 in November. December looks to continue the trend with low (or even negative) job growth expected.

As of mid-November, 26.1 million workers were hit by the COVID-19 downturn, including 10.7 million officially unemployed, 3.3 million unemployed but misclassified as employed or not in the labor force, 5.0 million who had dropped out of the labor force, and 7.1 million employed but experiencing a cut in pay and hours. Further, the recovery, such as it is, has revealed increasing disparities, with employment shortfalls greater for Black and Hispanic workers than for white workers. The latest congressional relief bill is an important step toward addressing some of this pain, but it is not at the scale of the problem. I’m hopeful that more relief measures are on the horizon for increasingly desperate workers and their families. Senate Republicans forced the December bill to be far too small. Fortunately, with the Democratic majority in the Senate given the results of the Georgia runoffs, Democrats will now be able to get more relief measures through reconciliation. Top priorities must be aid to state and local governments and further extensions of unemployment insurance.

Jobs day

Monthly change and three-month moving average of payroll employment, January 2023–March 2026

Date Monthly change in Employment Three-month moving average employment
Jan-2023 434 279
Feb-2023 290 274.6666667
Mar-2023 68 264
Apr-2023 241 199.6666667
May-2023 280 196.3333333
Jun-2023 225 248.6666667
Jul-2023 163 222.6666667
Aug-2023 218 202
Sep-2023 156 179
Oct-2023 159 177.6666667
Nov-2023 127 147.3333333
Dec-2023 154 146.6666667
Jan-2024 175 152
Feb-2024 206 178.3333333
Mar-2024 228 203
Apr-2024 64 166
May-2024 78 123.3333333
Jun-2024 87 76.33333333
Jul-2024 53 72.66666667
Aug-2024 9 49.66666667
Sep-2024 155 72.33333333
Oct-2024 33 65.66666667
Nov-2024 134 107.3333333
Dec-2024 237 134.6666667
Jan-2025 -48 107.6666667
Feb-2025 42 77
Mar-2025 67 20.33333333
Apr-2025 108 72.33333333
May-2025 13 62.66666667
Jun-2025 -20 33.66666667
Jul-2025 64 19
Aug-2025 -70 -8.666666667
Sep-2025 76 23.33333333
Oct-2025 -140 -44.66666667
Nov-2025 41 -7.666666667
Dec-2025 -17 -38.66666667
Jan-2026 160 61.33333333
Feb-2026 -133 3.333333333
Mar-2026 178 68.33333333

 

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Economic Policy Institute

Source: EPI analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Employment Statistics public data series.

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