Understanding data is not a political exercise
These graphics were prepared by or for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. They are not an exercise in political propaganda. There is a substantial ampunt of 'churn' in the labor market all the time, but what has happened in 2020 during the Covid crisis has never been seen before.
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Share of worker exits to unemployment and nonparticipation
Exit to unemployment has been massive in 2020, substantially higher than the exits to nonparticipation. The data are not easy to analyze because of the increasing role of the gig economy and informal employment.
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Share of worker exits to nonemployment by earnings
As a result of the Covid-19 panedemic, there has been the largest exit to nonemployment by those in the lowest quarter of earners. Since the onset of COVID-19, low-wage workers have been disproportionately affected by job loss. A disproportionate share of those who lost jobs came from the bottom half of the wage distribution.
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Growth in median usual weekly earnings
In the second quarter of 2020, the published four-quarter growth rate of nominal median usual weekly earnings (blue line) spiked at 10.4%. This is almost 8 percentage points higher than the growth rate of earnings for workers who had been employed full-time throughout the past year (green line).This is the result of the high levels of job loss among low-income workers since the start of the pandemic.
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