The Bureau of Labor Statistics in April deducted 800,000 jobs for seasonal adjustment, another 400,000 jobs in April and a couple hundred in May. “What we’re going to see in July is the seasonal adjustment completely flip. The government is going to add 1.3 million jobs onto the number. So there is one more month of seasonal adjustment in the pipeline and then the numbers are going to start to explode in July,” Orlando said.
Kelly agreed. “We think the labor market will improve very rapidly. One of the things I was encouraged by with the Federal Reserve numbers on Wednesday is they could have looked at the unemployment rate of 5.8% and used that as an excuse to say that, ‘Maybe we don’t get down to the 4.5% on the unemployment rate for the fourth quarter.’ But I think they’re seeing exactly what we’re seeing. They think this is technical. They think we’re going to see a very strong acceleration of job growth in the months ahead and so they’re appropriately reflecting that.”
What that will mean for what employers have to pay to lure workers back remains to be seen. “I want to emphasize this should not be a political issue,” Kelly said. “Fifteen dollars an hour is not a lot of money. It’s not a judgment on anybody for making a logically economic choice. But economic logic does say a lot of people need to get paid more if they’re going to go back to work.”
Orlando said employers may not have a choice on wages and that the economy right now may give them the ability to raise prices. “We’re in a jailbreak economy right now and the people will pay just about anything to go out to eat or on vacation with their family after all those months of lockdown.”