(New York)

Some bad news on the jobs market emerged this week. In the weekly data, another 1.3m Americans applied for unemployment assistance. That number has stayed steady for weeks and shows no signs of abating. But it is other contextual info that makes that number worse. For instance, job openings are now declining, with total numbers in July down versus June. Growth in worker hours is also waning after growing for several weeks. Finally, google searches for “file for unemployment” are growing.

FINSUM: When you take all this together, a comprehensive picture is starting to show. It appears that the rising COVID cases may now be seriously putting a halt on the recovery.