The January jobs report is out, and the United States economy added a paltry 49,000 jobs, a figure nobody is satisfied with. But with the pandemic raging on, the path forward is still unclear. Newell invited Bankrate.com Senior Analyst Mark Hamrick onto the show Friday morning to explain what’s next.
“Well, Mark - what’s the news?” Newell began.
“I guess the good news is we still have an economy,” Hamrick joked. “The national unemployment rate is below 10%, but I'm sad to say that I think better times are ahead - they're not quite present yet. With the progress that we will see with the vaccines, I think all of us are at the point where we know someone that's gotten one or two shots, with the hope that everyone else gets it sooner not later. The economy will open up, but there is substantial damage to repair. Half of households lost income during this downturn... I was going down the list this morning that all the sectors and the jobs, they still have to make up ground. I mean, business and professional services have to make up 825,000 jobs. Something near and dear around you, leisure and hospitality lost about nearly 4 million jobs shy of where it was in February 2020. Retail, 400,000 healthcare, 500,000. So it's a lot of work to do in terms of repairing the economy.”
“No doubt,” Newell said. “Obviously the rollout of the vaccine has had a couple of hiccups, some speed bumps, some hurdles to get over, many of which we anticipated. Do you think that we've run into more issues or less issues than what the economists had anticipated?”
“In terms of the vaccine administration, I don't think there's any question that has been a disappointment when the government didn't reach its own ambitious numbers,” Hamrick said. “And when you hear the numbers - and I don't want to get into the FDA realm, that's better left to the people that actually know what they're talking about - when you hear that in the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, no one in the trial group was hospitalized or died… I mean, that's amazing. I think that we have every reason to be optimistic, but there's the healing from the pandemic, and then there's the healing of the economy. And here we are with another month where essentially no jobs were created.”
“If you look at the private sector, it was 10 million still officially unemployed and 13 million either underemployed or have exited the labor force but would like to work,” Hamrick continued. “That's sizable. Plenty of people, probably including us, have basically remained out of the line of fire with respect to the damage in the economy. I thank God every day for that, but that doesn't overcome the fact that so many people have suffered. I know it's significant there with Mardi Gras on the way, and the way that's going to be a loss of income for people around your area. But when the economy opens up, I think there could be a global bourbon shortage! So we'll see whether we can claw back some of this activity on an economic basis.”
“Don't tell anyone yet, but when it does open up, we're planning a 365 day Mardi Gras season,” Newell joked.
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
