By Phillip Sprehe
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release its monthly Current Employment Statistics (CES) and Current Population Survey (CPS) report for October 2021 on Friday, November 5th. 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.
The disappointing jobs performance the U.S. experienced in August and September was primarily driven by the emergence of the Delta variant of Covid-19 and local education employment veering from its usual seasonal pattern in the fall. October is showing a lot of uncertainty, but there are more encouraging signs. The seven-day average of new daily Covid-19 cases has declined by more than 50,000. We are likely past the seasonal abnormalities of local education employment, and claims for unemployment benefits fell during the month. These factors should lead to an improved job market in October, but employment is unlikely to approach the 1 million new monthly jobs seen over the summer.
Geographic Solutions derives its employment forecast from internal data on the number of job openings 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 October of 353,000.
Portrayed in the chart below is the 4.6% unemployment rate that Geographic Solutions forecasts for October, a decrease from the 4.8% rate in September. The unemployment rate forecast uses internal data on the number of job openings, job severances, job applications, job searchers, and the number of applications for unemployment benefits filed on Geographic Solutions state client sites.
After the release of the report, Geographic Solutions will post a full analysis of the results.