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The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release its monthly Current Employment Statistics (CES) and Current Population Survey (CPS) report for April 2021 on Friday, May 7th. Geographic Solutions, Inc. has produced forecasts of the two most closely watched macroeconomic data series from the report: the monthly change in employment and the monthly unemployment rate.
Job growth in March (+916,000) signaled the U.S. entered a new phase in the recovery that returns to the job increases of summer 2020. As of April 12th (the cutoff date for the April labor market surveys) the full vaccination rate in the U.S. was 22.6% compared to 10.7% one month earlier. Employment should further accelerate in the coming months as vaccines are distributed to a greater percentage of the population. The crucial matters for forecasters to balance is the effect of reopening along with the delays and disruptions in supply chains seen over the last couple of months. This dynamic will probably result in explosive job growth in the services sector but more subdued job increases in the goods sector.
Geographic Solutions derives its employment forecast from internal data on the number of job openings, job severances, and job searchers. The forecast uses unemployment claims data from the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL). As seen in the chart below, we predict job growth in April of 1.6 million.
Portrayed in the table below is the 5.7% unemployment rate that Geographic Solutions forecasts for April, the first time the unemployment rate declined below 6.0% since its pandemic peak in April 2020. The unemployment rate forecast used internal data on job openings, job severances, job searchers, and the number of applications for unemployment benefits filed on Geographic Solutions state client sites. The forecast uses unemployment claims data from the USDOL.
After the release of the report, Geographic Solutions will post a full analysis of the results.