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The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly Current Employment Statistics (CES) report and Current Population Survey (CPS) for November 2020 on Friday, December 4th. The results mark nine months since the Covid-19 economic lockdown and seven months since the labor market recovery began. The monthly change in employment given by the CES and the unemployment rate from the CPS are seen as the standard gauges for assessing the health of the U.S. labor market. The CES reports that employment in November 2020 increased by 245,000. The unemployment rate fell to 6.7%. Job creation as of November 12th (the date of the survey) has fallen to a point that is in line with pre-pandemic job numbers (February 2020 had 251 thousand). Now near the December 12th survey date, the weekly initial unemployment benefits averaged for December increased by 20,000. These developments together are fairly discouraging considering that the job market still has 9.8 million jobs left to go to reach its pre-pandemic level in February.
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