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It looks like we will see gains in the February jobs report
Here’s what Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, has to say: “It’s really hard to get government positive, although we are beginning to reopen schools. That will help to bring government numbers back up. What’s interesting is, you know, this month is a critical month because it’s comparing to the peak of the last expansion, and we’re still going to be down close to 10 million jobs from that period of February 2020 to February 2021. The unemployment rate will probably tick up a little bit to 6.4%. But as we know, that number looks elusively good, because so many people are literally not participating in the labor market right now, because there aren’t jobs to go back to yet.” Swonk added, “We’re down 4.3 million people who were working in the labor force a year ago, who aren’t there today. Sixty percent of them are women.”
Some Texas power suppliers are going bust, and the ERCOT CEO has been ousted, as fallout from deadly power outage continues
Marketplace’s Nova Safo has more.
