Hiring Additional 100,000 Employees

9/15/2020

884,000M

Initial U.S unemployment claims totaled a seasonally adjusted 884,000 million for the week ended Sept 5, higher than economists’ forecast of 850,000. The number, which is unchanged from the prior week’s revised number — suggesting a softening in the labor market’s recovery. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for teens aged 16 to 19 years hit 16.1% in August — just below the long-run average since 1948 — from 31.9% in April. Furthermore, for the week ending September 5, 48 states reported that initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance continued to climb, rising more than 90,000 last week to 838,916. The number of people receiving state unemployment benefits totaled 13.4 million — a slight increase from the prior week and is not a great sign for the job’s recovery.

12%

New job postings slowed down in late summer after three months of steady increases. According to data from job-search sites, job postings dropped when COVID-19 hit in the spring. May postings were 33% below February’s pre-pandemic level, then steadily improved when many businesses reopened in July and august job postings were 12% below those in February. However, the numbers have plateaued and remained well below year-earlier levels. The job posting for food sectors were down more than 20% while the hospitality & travel sectors witnessed a steep decline in hiring activity — were down more than 40% in late August from a year earlier, the indeed data showed. The slowing job rebound indicates that the economy continues to dig out of the deep hole created by efforts to contain the pandemic. Meanwhile, Kronos U.S. workforce activity report shows that weekly shift workers rose 0.5% in August.

21M

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has estimated that roughly 21 million Americans struggle to connect to the internet due to a lack of high-speed internet access. As COVID-19 pushed school moves online in West Virginia, many students start the year virtually but 30% and 50% of K-12 students reported they don’t have internet access at home, according to West Virginia Department of Education. Meanwhile, United States Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is seeking federal funding to set up broadband hot spots across the country to aid remote learning for students during the pandemic. Nearly 157 million people — half the US population have a slow or unreliable internet connection, the Microsoft study found.

100,000

Amazon announced plans to hire additional 100,000 employees to meet the growing demand for online shopping, which has spiked during the pandemic. According to the Wall Street Journal, the new positions are for full and part-time workers across the U.S. and Canada, offering starting wages of at least $15 an hour as well as a sign-on bonus up to $1,000 to new hires in select cities. This comes in addition to the 33,000 corporate and technology jobs announced last week. Dave Clark, Amazon’s Senior Vice President said that we’re opening 100 buildings in September across new fulfillment and sortation centers, delivery stations, and other sites. Amid the rising sales, shares in Amazon have surged almost 70% this year, according to FactSet.

23.9%

U.S economy is rebounding from a coronavirus-related downturn more quickly than anticipated, economists stated in the monthly survey, which is reported by the Wall Street Journal. The economists anticipate GDP to extend at an annualized rate of 23.9% in the third quarter — that is up sharply from an expectation of an 18.3% progress price within the earlier survey. The economy shrank at an annualized rate of 31.7 percent in the second quarter and declined at a 5% pace in the first, according to the Commerce Department. Economists’ estimates that 2020 gross domestic GDP to shrink 4.2% this year, measured from the fourth quarter of 2019 — an improvement from the 5.3% contraction anticipated in last month’s survey.

0.4%

In August, the U.S. consumer price jumped 0.4% — marked the third straight month of gains but lower than the 0.6% increase recorded in July, but it beat market expectations, the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. The economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected a monthly increase in August was 0.3%, the annual estimate was 1.2%. The increase was led by a sharp increase in prices of used cars and trucks jumped 5.4% — the biggest monthly gain since March 1969. The household furnishings also rose 0.9% in August — the largest monthly gain since February 1991. The energy index rose 0.9% in August as the gasoline index rose 2% — but is 16.7% lower than a year ago. The food index rose 0.1 percent in August after falling 0.4% in July, the report shows.

2,645

Meanwhile, we have a new Guinness World Record. A professional fisherman in Illinois named Jeff Kolodzinski has earned The Marathon Man nickname by setting a Guinness Book of World Records for catching 2,645 fish in a single 24-hour period — broke his previous Guinness World Record of 2,172 fish caught in 24 hours, which he set in 2019. My true passion has always been to introduce people and families to fishing and to increase awareness and financial support for Fishing for Life, Jeff said in a statement. The fishing attempt raised money for charity and he said he plans to raise $20,000 for the charity foundation Fishing For Life.