July Jobs Report Shows Slight Improvement

     The Missouri labor market continued to recover in July 2020, following major job losses due to COVID-19 shutdowns earlier in the year. Employment, seasonally adjusted, increased by 52,200 jobs over the month. Missouri’s smoothed seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased to 6.9 percent in July 2020 from a revised June 2020 rate of 7.8 percent, a decrease of nine-tenths of a percentage point.
     Missouri’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has now been either below or equal to the national rate for 65 consecutive months. The national unemployment rate was 10.2 percent in July 2020.
     The estimated number of unemployed Missourians was 211,177 in July 2020, down by 25,026 from June’s 236,203.
     Due to lingering layoffs from COVID-19 shutdowns, the July 2020 seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was still more than double the July 2019 rate. The rate had reached a record low of 3.0 percent starting in July 2018, before edging up a tenth of a point in November 2018 and again in December 2018.      The rate was steady at 3.5 percent in January and February 2020 before the COVID-19 spike began in March 2020. The rate peaked at 10.2 percent in April 2020 before decreasing slightly in May 2020, then moving strongly lower in June and July of 2020 as COVID-19 restrictions were eased.
     The state’s not-seasonally-adjusted rate was 7.2 percent in July 2020, down by seven-tenths of a percentage point from the June 2020 not-seasonally-adjusted rate of 7.9 percent. The corresponding national rate was 10.5 percent. 
     A year ago, the state’s seasonally adjusted rate was 3.2 percent, and the not-adjusted rate was 3.8 percent.