One of the most awaited economic reports today is the latest unemployment data from the United States. Surprisingly, the non-farming payrolls came in at 1.76 million, while a job increase of only 1.6 million was forecasted. The unemployment rate for July also lowered from 11.1 to 10.2% against a forecast of 10.5%.
These surprisingly positive reports come on the back of yesterday’s jobless claims data, which showed only 1.1 million initial claims, less than the anticipated 1.4 million. The continuing jobless claims were also lower than expected at 1.61 million.
Together, these numbers show the most confident recovery on the US labor market since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis in the country which caused more than 20 million Americans to lose their jobs.
In other US-related news, President Trump issued a formal ban to TikTok and WeChat which comes into effect on September 15. These Chinese-owned apps have until that deadline to cease operations in the United States, unless they are able to secure an American buyer by then.
Meanwhile, US stock indices are all depressed today due to the government’s inability to negotiate a new stimulus bill to fight the pressure from the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. It has been over a week since the previous bill expired and the unemployed are no longer receiving the higher welfare they benefited from over the past few months.
The United States surpassed 5 million confirmed Covid-19 cases yesterday, adding 58,000 on Thursday alone. Though this number is considerably below recent records of over 70,000 cases per day, it is higher than the numbers quoted at the beginning of this week.
Brazil and India are also still reporting daily increases above 50,000. There is also a resurgence of the coronavirus in Europe, though not anywhere near where they were at the start of the pandemic. The total number of cases worldwide reached 19.3 million.
