Economics

Economy gets better: Unemployment drops, jobs added. U.S. Adds 1.8 Million Jobs, Unemployment Drops to 10.2 Percent.

The U.S. unemployment rate dropped from 11.1 percent to 10.2 percent in July, beating economists’ predictions even as many states have paused or reversed their reopenings in light of coronavirus case spikes.

Employers added 1.8 million jobs in July, according to the Labor Department’s Friday jobs report, a significant slowing down from the 4.8 million jobs created in June, which was the highest recorded. While the economy has recovered 42 percent of the 22 million jobs it lost during the pandemic over the past three months, there are still 10.6 million more unemployed Americans today than there were in February.

Economists had expected unemployment to drop to 10.5 percent and for the economy to have added 1.6 million jobs in July, according to a survey by Refinitiv. 

People who lost their jobs wait in line to file for unemployment following an outbreak of the coronavirus, at an Arkansas Workforce Center in Fort Smith, Ark., April 6, 2020. (Nick Oxford/Reuters)

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Is capitalism modern? To ask this question is to attract puzzled looks and incredulity, from people of all persuasions. Surely, they will say, the answer is yes? For many it is the advent of capitalism that marks the advent of modernity, for good or ill so the two in some sense are the same, or at least inextricably connected.

Another way of looking at the matter is that for over two hundred years the big argument has been whether there can be a form of modernity that is not also capitalist, with many arguing that all the evidence is that there cannot be such a beast.

The reality though is more complex and thinking about that reality makes us more aware of our own historical fortune and also of how fragile that good fortune may be.

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