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Negotiations between the Trump administration and Democratic congressional leaders on another round of stimulus broke down Thursday night. The deadlock between both sides could result in President Trump issuing an executive order to re-appropriate money already appropriated by Congress and instead redirect it toward restoring the federal money for the unemployed, as well as reinstating the federal moratorium on evictions. 

Axios reports Friday morning the White House is “finalizing a series of executive orders addressing key coronavirus stimulus priorities if negotiations with Congress fall apart.” 

With both sides still far apart, one official told Axios that they “wouldn’t be surprised that, if something gets left off the table, we’d be like ‘we can take this executive action too and be able to win on it anyway.” 

Axios notes that the president could sign “executive orders as early as today [Friday].” 

The official said the president is anxious about being in control of the situation. Top aides and Republicans have said if they don’t get another round of stimulus passed in a timely matter, it will make the White House look bad ahead of elections. 

“It’s an election year. We need to get this done. We need to pump money into the economy and the only ones who benefit politically from not doing that are [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi, [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer and [Joe] Biden,” one House Republican told Axios.

House Democrats have already passed a bill, though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared it a “$3 trillion-dollar wish-list.” Republicans have a bill of their own, which is around a trillion-dollars.

Here’s the comparison of the Democratic and Republic stimulus plans. 

President Trump was on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning, insisting the Democrats have stalled talks. He said he might suspend the payroll tax to supercharge the economy ahead of the election. 

“Well, I may do it myself,” Trump said in an interview with Fox & Friends. 

However, many political pundits and constitutional law experts believe the president may not hold the authority to pass additional relief measures via executive order: 

 “Congress has to pass tax laws, not the president,” Seth Hanlon, a tax-policy expert at the Center for American Progress, told Yahoo Money.

“He has limited authority to postpone tax filing and payment deadlines, in instances of disasters.”

Top Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow made his rounds on Friday morning touting the jobs number.

Kudlow told Fox Business that both political parties are in a stalemate over stimulus talks. He said the president is not bluffing on using an executive order to pass additional relief measures for Americans, adding that a payroll tax cut could be seen as well. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Remarks made by President Trump during a speech have prompted speculation after he referred to having a lot of rich enemies and told the audience, “This may be the last time you’ll see me for a while.”

The comments were made during an address Trump gave at the Whirlpool Corporation Manufacturing Plant in Clyde, Ohio.

The context of the remarks was an executive order that will mandate U.S. government agencies purchase all essential drugs from American sources.

Trump blamed the American political class for the fact that drugs are cheaper to buy in other countries Canada even if they are made by the same company.

Trump: “I have a lot of rich enemies. You won’t see me for awhile.” pic.twitter.com/8AmaiENezf

— Mike ░▒▓█ マイケル (@northexpedition) August 6, 2020

“So I have a lot of enemies out there. This may be the last time you’ll see me for a while. A lot of very, very rich enemies, but they are not happy with what I’m doing,” said Trump.

“But I figure we have one chance to do it, and no other President is going to do what I do. No other President would do a favored nations, a rebate, a buy from other nations at much less cost. Nobody. And there are a lot of unhappy people, and they’re very rich people, and they’re very unhappy,” he added.

In terms of who Trump was identifying as his “enemies,” the president made reference to wealthy anonymous “middlemen” who skim profits from pharmaceutical sales.

“They are so wealthy. They are so wealthy,” said Trump. “Nobody has any idea who the hell they are or what they do. They make more money than the drug companies. You know, in all fairness, at least the drug companies have to produce a product, and it has to be good product.”

*  *  *

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With more than 3,000 Beirut families now homeless, and more than 150 have officially been declared death as the search for remains over the massive blast site continues, Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Friday that an official government probe would look into the “possibility of external interference”, including the possibility that the explosion was triggered by a rocket or a bomb.

“The cause has not been determined yet. There is a possibility of external interference through a rocket or bomb or other act,” President Michel Aoun said in comments carried by local media and confirmed by his office, per Reuters.

Meanwhile, thousands of Beirutis took to the streets last night to protest the government’s apparent incompetence. Some hurled stones at police while others mourned the descent into anarchy.

The small crowd, some hurling stones, marked a return to the kind of protests that had become a feature of life in Beirut, as Lebanese watched their savings evaporate and currency disintegrate, while government decision-making floundered.

“There is no way we can rebuild this house. Where is the state?” Tony Abdou, an unemployed 60-year-old.

His family home is in Gemmayze, a district that lies a few hundred metres from the port warehouses where 2,750 tonnes of highly explosive ammonium nitrate was stored for years, a ticking time bomb near a densely populated area.

A security source and local media previously said the fire that caused the blast was ignited by warehouse welding work.

Lebanon has promised a full investiation, and 16 people have already been arrested. But many fear that those taken into custody are merely scapegoats for government incompetence.

The government has promised a full investigation. State news agency NNA said 16 people were taken into custody.

But for many Lebanese, the explosion was symptomatic of years of neglect by the authorities while corruption thrived.

Officials have said the blast, whose seismic impact was recorded hundreds of miles (kilometres) away, might have caused losses amounting to $15 billion – a bill the country cannot pay when it has already defaulted on its mountain of national debt, exceeding 150% of economic output, and talks about a lifeline from the International Monetary Fund have stalled.

Theories that the explosion was precipitated by a missile or a bomb have been summarily dismissed, due to both a purported preponderance of evidence to the contrary (video of the scene clearly shows a fire and several explosions in the warehouse precipitating the explosion), and the readiness of international terror groups and foreign governments to deny responsibility for the attack. But there’s still so much left unknown, and Lebanon’s apparent disinterest in pursuing the Russian businessman whose seized cache of ammonium nitrate caused the explosion has led to more questions.

To be sure, negligence, or a tragic accident, would also be examined as probable causes. Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources close to the Lebanese government, that an initial probe has blamed negligence pertaining to the storage of the explosive material.

But the US has previously said it has not ruled out an attack. Israel, which has fought several wars with Lebanon, has also previously denied it had any role.

As we explained earlier this week, a 2,500-ton cache of ultravolatile ammonium nitrate had been stored in a waterfront warehouse by the Lebanese government after it was seized from a foreign ship back in 2013. For years, several port authorities (some of whom are now under house arrest as the government starts its investigation/hunt for a scapegoat) reportedly warned the government about the dangers associated with the chemical cash, and urged them to find a way to dispose of it – even if it meant handing it out to Lebanese farmers to spread over their crops.

And the almost unbelievable story of how the explosive substance got there has emerged. It’s centered on a derelict and leaking vessel leased by a Russian businessman living in Cyprus. In 2013 the man identified as Igor Grechushkin, was paid $1 million to transport the high-density ammonium nitrate to the port of Beira in Mozambique. That’s when the ship, named the Rhosus, left the Black Sea port of Batumi, in Georgia.

But amid mutiny by an unpaid crew, a hole in the ship’s hull, and constant legal troubles, the ship never made it. Instead, it entered the port of Beirut where it was impounded by Lebanese authorities over severe safety issues, during which time the ammonium nitrate was transferred off, and the largely Ukrainian crew was prevented from disembarking, leading to a brief international crisis among countries as Kiev sought the safe return of its nationals.

Meanwhile, Igor Grechushkin – believed to still be living in Cyprus – reportedly simply abandoned the dangerously subpar vessel he leased, as well as its crew, never to be heard from again.

The ammonium nitrate was supposed to be auctioned off, but this never happened. Apparently exasperated customs and dock officials even suggested Lebanese farmers could simply spread it across their fields for a good crop yield. But not even this simple solution was heeded, nor proposals to give it to the Lebanese Army.

[…]

Meanwhile, the fate of the man originally at the center of the saga, whose decision to simply abandon the leaky ammonium nitrate laden ship in the first place, remains somewhat of a mystery and is now largely being overlooked in international media reports. Strangely, it doesn’t even appear that Lebanese law enforcement is eager to talk to him just yet.

Cypriot media is saying Igor Grechushkin is not a Cypriot passport holder but is indeed residing in the EU country. Local authorities have indicated they are ready to bring him in for questioning, but they haven’t received a request from either Lebanese authorities or Interpol. Cypriot police spokesman Christos Andreou announced Thursday: “We have already contacted Interpol Beirut and expressed our readiness to provide them with any assistance they need, if and when our assistance is requested.”

An initial government “probe” blamed negligence related to storage of the explosive material. And with more Beirutis taking to the streets to demand an answer, we’re curious to see how the government handles the process as it seeks to preserve what little credibility it has left.

Authored by Tom Luongo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

For nearly a year it has been my primary thesis that the DNC nominating convention would determine the fate of the presidential election here in the states. These four days may, in fact, be more dramatic than any Democratic convention since 1860 when incumbent James Buchanan was tossed aside to ensure a lawyer with railroad ties from Illinois, Stephen Douglas, squared off against Republican Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln was also a railroad lawyer from Illinois. Just sayin’.

The convention is less than two weeks away and serious questions about the Democrats’ strategy should be plain to see for anyone who pays even cursory attention to presidential politics.

How can they possibly run Joe Biden?

It’s not that Biden hasn’t been a good soldier for the empire, he has. It is that he is unpresentable as a candidate in public. The evidence of his cognitive decline, which has accelerated in recent months, mounts every time he fails to even read a teleprompter correctly.

The only thing the Democrats are united on is their hatred for Trump. But that hatred cannot be an animating principle to base an election strategy on, though, to this point, they certainly have tried.

Internally, there has been a three-sided war on for control of the party’s future.

1. There is the Boomers, represented by Hillary Clinton’s faction, who lost spectacularly when she backed a male version of herself, the profoundly disconnected and unlikeable Mike Bloomberg, as a stalking horse to pad her delegate count.

2. There is the frustrated Gen-Xers, represented by Barack Obama who was supposed to lead the party after his two terms as president. Biden is his representative and was the clear winner in the primaries as the candidate who theoretically could swing the center of the country away from Trump.

3. And then there is the Millennials, represented in the primaries by Bernie Sanders and the so-called squad. They are led now by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez whose goal is to kick out all of these globalists and remake the party as the vanguard of a U.S. cultural revolution.

None of these people are acceptable to the center of the U.S. who today, no matter how hard they are being gaslit to believe, ultimately blame Donald Trump for their current problems.

And Obama pressed for Biden to be the candidate. He finally beat Hillary for nominal control of the party, getting his candidate through the primary miasma.

You can’t blame a President for a natural disaster, but that’s been the Democrats’ strategy all year with COVID-19. Whatever Trump said or did in response to the virus was wrong, even if that meant exhibiting blatant hypocrisy or openly contradicting previous positions.

In fact, this has been the Democrats’ strategy since before Trump took office and it has made them look hysterical and irrelevant.

So, with the convention less than two weeks away the big question is who Biden’s running mate will be. The fact that he hasn’t chosen one yet tells you that they have no strategy for actually winning the election other than trying to steal it through mail-in ballots.

Because none of the potential candidates can do what the Democrats need a vice-presidential candidate to do, deliver a key battleground state.

For Biden, given the rapidity of his decline, the V.P. pick has the added burden of actually being the President for most of the elected term, because the convention will make it clear to the world that Biden will step aside for health reasons no later than mid-2021 if he wins.

But, more pressing for the Democrats, is the fundamental problem that in order to beat back AOC’s Squad and keep Hillary bound down, they are now saddled with an unelectable candidate and a platoon of potential running mates who are wholly unacceptable to either the DNC establishment, the country at large or both.

Whoever tunes into the virtual convention will realize almost immediately that this time, more than any election in the televised era, when filling in that ballot in November you will be voting on the qualifications bottom half of the ticket rather than the top.

Moreover, since Biden has declined so quickly the odds of an internal coup against him occurring at the convention in Milwaukee is high. It’s why the New York Times is now calling to cancel presidential debates. It’s not because “never made sense as a test for presidential leadership.” It’s because, though the writer doth protest too much, everyone knows that Trump will wipe the floor with Biden.

In fact, I would argue debates between Trump and Biden will be so lopsided they would work to Biden’s advantage as people who see Trump’s attacks on him as ‘elder abuse.’ Trump would have to actually tone down his persona in a way I’m not sure he’s capable of doing.

But I digress.

The other factions within the DNC are sharpening their knives I type this. Hillary will go in filled with all the bile her gall bladder can still produce to thwart the potential ascension of any other woman to the presidency before her.

AOC and company will go in with Bernie’s delegates and play spoiler. Obama will try to figure out how to hold his new-found power together while Biden, frankly, drools on himself in the corner.

And that may be the most damning image of this pathetic and sordid affair I can muster. Biden should have already stepped aside. He should have already accepted the gold watch for his service and moved on to the great globalist golf course. But instead he’s being abused by cynical, power-mad ideologues desperate to avoid not only their own malfeasance, i.e. Obamagate, but have one last shot at delivering the U.S. back into the hands of The Davos Crowd’s move towards their Great Reset.

It’s clear that this election season has been about prepping the stage for the campaign season that puts so much pressure on Trump to perform miracles that Americans simply reject him as incompetent and will accept anyone other than him as President.

In Milwaukee, no matter what happens, we’re going to find out just how incompetent his opposition truly is.

Weeks after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US would strip Hong Kong of its “special status” after a controversial national security law imposed by Beijing allegedly robbed the administrative region of its legal autonomy, the White House is reportedly drawing up plans to impose sanctions on Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam.

Several mainland officials would also be targeted.

• U.S. POISED TO SANCTION HONG KONG CHIEF LAM OVER CRACKDOWN
• U.S. ALSO TARGETING CHINESE OFFICIALS OVER HONG KONG CRACKDOWN
• *U.S. SANCTION PLANS PROVIDED BY THREE PEOPLE FAMILIAR

The White House move follows the passage of a law by Congress back in June that would target Chinese officials involved in the Hong Kong crackdown. That bill targeted banks that deal with Communist Party officials. The new sanctions being planned by the White House will also target Chinese officials from the mainland.

It’s worth noting that the payrolls-induced bump in US stock futures has been almost entirely erased…

…and the offshore yuan dropped on the news.

The sanctions will reportedly be imposed on Friday.

Attempting to cool or at least find a way forward through soaring tensions Defense Secretary Mark Esper spoke with his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe for over an hour and a half on Thursday in a tense phone call.

Focused on avoiding conflict in the South China Sea and Taiwan — the latter now expecting “the highest-level visit by a U.S. cabinet official” to Taipei in forty years, namely led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar — it’s the first time the two have talked since March.

“Secretary Esper called for greater PRC [People’s Republic of China] transparency on COVID, expressed concern about PRC destabilizing activity in the vicinity of Taiwan and the South China Sea, and called on the PRC to honor international obligations under the principles of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration,” a Pentagon press news release said of the talks.

“Secretary Esper communicated the importance that the PRC abide by international laws, rules, and norms, and meet its international commitments.”

Further they discussed the following variety of subjects around which the two sides have lately seen tensions:

• Esper urged that China “abide by international laws, rules, and norms” in the South China Sea.
• China’s expansionist claims over the South China Sea were addressed… Esper emphasized the US backs all regional countries whose claims conflict with China’s.
• The two agreed on a crisis deescalation military hotline.
• Esper further “expressed concerns about [the Chinese military’s] destabilizing activity in the vicinity of Taiwan and the South China Sea, and called on [China] to honor international obligations,” according to the Pentagon read-out.
• Wei warned Esper against “dangerous moves” that would prove to only escalate bilateral tensions.
• Wei also urged the US to stop the “stigmatization” of China.
• He urged the US to “stop erroneous acts and rhetoric”.

Wei specifically “expressed China’s principled position on the South China Sea, Taiwan, and the US’s ‘stigmatisation’ of China, asking the US to stop its wrong words and deeds, strengthen maritime risk management and control, avoid dangerous actions that may heat up the situation, and maintain regional peace and stability,” state-run Xinhua said.

Esper has signaled he plans to travel to China by the end of this year to explore some of these issues further, especially to focus on improving “crisis communications” channels.

Authored by Michael Every via Rabobank,

For those who don’t read this Daily regularly, I have been warning that the US and China were heading for a real Cold War since late 2017, and I have been stating openly that the US was going to decouple from China for two years, with the sequence being trade, then tech, then capital. For a long time, this view was regarded as interesting or colourful, but extreme. Now it’s becoming mainstream – perhaps because it is impossible to ignore what is going on.

For example, US President Trump has signed an order banning TikTok in 45 days – and WeChat. As noted before, no WeChat, no chatting between the US and China given China bans Western apps. Back to the expensive telephone it is then…

…but not via a Chinese carrier. The US is also pushing ahead with a “Clean Network” policy that covers: ‘Clean Carrier’ to ensure no Chinese carriers are connected with US telecom networks; ‘Clean Store’ to remove untrusted applications from US mobile app stores; ‘Clean Apps’ to prevent untrusted Chinese smartphone manufacturers from pre-installing, or otherwise making available for download, trusted apps on their apps store; ‘Clean Cloud’ to protect US citizens’ most sensitive personal information and our businesses’ most valuable intellectual property; and, ‘Clean Cable’: to ensure the undersea cables connecting the US to the global internet are not subverted for intelligence gathering by China. This is as Google deletes 2,500 China-linked YouTube channels over “disinformation”.

In short, from both the US *and* the Chinese side, with their Great Firewall, we see a Splinternet developing. As the editor of the Global Times tweeted yesterday: “Pompeo’s call is to ultimately cut off China-US internet connection. This wild ambition will lead to fundamental consequences that humanity will be divided. With cooperation and exchange completely gone, China and the US will head for confrontation, followed by the risk of war.” So that’s tech.

On the trade side, next week is the crucial phase-one trade deal review. Trump’s presidential challenger Joe Biden has pointed out that China is falling very short of what it promised, upping the ante on the White House. Even before that, Trump signed another executive order to bring back US pharmaceutical manufacturing (from India and China, mostly), which apparently had been delayed by legal reviews. Of course, China’s trade data today showed exports surprising to the upside at 7.2% y/y vs. -0.6% consensus and yet imports -1.4% vs. a gain of 0.9% expected. That saw a monthly trade surplus of USD62bn(!) In short, China was a net drag on global growth as it bought less from everyone and sold far more – a mercantilism that will increase global protectionist pressures beyond pharma products.

The Global Times editor, bridging tech and trade –which WeChat does– and brushing aside mercantilism, added: “Without merchants crossing the border, troops will appear. Clean Network will stifle China-US cooperation and divide the internet, which will inevitably intensify confrontation. There are already many points of friction between the two countries. Risk of hot war will rise.” So that’s trade.

We all know that after initial unhappiness, markets soon adjusted to US-China trade tensions – though bond yields continued to go lower. Markets are also shrugging off tech tensions, despite the fundamental global schism this implies, because most in Western markets don’t use WeChat. They are also naturally ignoring any thought of war – unless gold and bond yields are telling us something on that front.

However, markets may wake up when the US-China split gets to capital. The Wall Street Journal today reports “US Plan Threatens to Delist Chinese Firms”, noting that unless they comply with US auditing requirements, which none can, they would be forced to give up their listings by end-2022. Please don’t forget we also have the looming issue of sanctions over Hong Kong ticking away in the background, where legislation imposes an end-2022 date at the latest to restrict USD access to at least some Chinese financial institutions. The worst-case scenario of what this can mean has already been spelled out above.

Yet if one wants to look just at markets, look at Turkey. It has also emerged as a major global economy of geostrategic importance, and one not shy of going its own way domestically and in foreign policy. Yet it is on the cusp of a major currency crisis given it has run out of USD via a go for growth and go-for-broke strategy. This morning TRY was at a record low of 7.27 after state banks refrained from intervening on behalf of the CBRT, as they have been doing for months, and it’s hard to see where the selling stops. As our own Piotr Matys points out, major economic reforms are needed along with much higher interest rates, as they are 8.25% vs. 11.8% y/y inflation, and even then IMF help is likely needed (see here for more).

Yet the IMF still has the US as its largest shareholder and an EU member as its boss: are either going to be providing USD funds without changes to an expensive foreign policy that sees Turkey clashing with France, Greece, and Cyprus over energy, and with the US over Syria and missile defence? Great powers need power in all dimensions, as the Soviet Union found out when its economy failed, as China may also find out via its currency, and likewise the EU via its lack of a military.

On which front, the US needs to look after its economy. There was surprisingly good news yesterday on weekly initial jobless claims, which came in substantially lower than the 1.4 million expected, and all eyes will be on payrolls today. Yet there is still no sign of agreement in Congress on a new multi-trillion USD stimulus package, and we are instead reliant on rumours of further Trump executive orders on the likes of payroll tax cuts, unemployment extensions, and an eviction amnesty, without which consumer spending is about to face imminent collapse. As Matt Stoller tweeted yesterday: 

“Dear Republican China hawks: China’s main ideological claim is that their system delivers for their people, and ours doesn’t deliver for our people. The Republican strategy of throwing tens of millions into poverty during a pandemic proves the CCP’s point.”

Meanwhile, as Australia’s government joins the US in a Cold War, with defence spending set to leap 40% over the next decade, the RBA was keen to show in today’s quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy that negative rates are not going to be used, echoing the BOE a day earlier. The Bank is also expecting Aussie borders to be closed until at least the middle of next year – which is worth noting as everyone else keeps trying to reopen their skies only to then have to roll the measures back. Markets have been able to shrug off this global splintering so far too, but to imagine that countries can remain mostly closed to travel for 18 months and not see deep, lasting hysteresis effects is as delusional as thinking that the US-China dynamic does not really matter.

With analyst and trader expectations about today’s payrolls report fluctuating wildly, with some expecting a sizable drop after this week’s disappointing ADP report and ISM employment components not to mention rolling over high frequency date…

… while others hoping the recent trend of payrolls increases continues after president Trump tried to stoke optimism saying to expect a “big number”, moments ago the BLS reported that in the end the good news won out with the US economy adding 1.763MM, which while above the 1.48 million estimate was still well below June’s record 4.8MM surge.

Still, as the ADP payrolls report hinted, the manufacturing sector is starting to sputter, with just 26K jobs added in July.

Putting the rebound in context, the US economy still has a ways to go before it fills even half the labor gap that opened after the March covid shutdowns.

With more people returning to work, especially lower paid workers, the average hourly earnings declined once again, shrinking to 4.8% Y/Y from 4.9% last month, if well above the 4.2% expectation.

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased by 0.1 hour to 34.5 hours in July. In manufacturing, the workweek rose by 0.7 hour to 39.7 hours, and overtime increased by 0.3 hour to 2.8 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.0 hours

The unemployment rate also continued to slide, and from 11.1% last month it declined to just 10.2% in July, well below the 10.6% expected.

One reason for the rate improvement: the participation rate dipped from 61.5% to 61.4%

Curiously, almost the entire gain in payrolls was the result of a shrinkage in the number of “temporary unemployed” which dropped by 1.34MM to 9.225MM.

The question is: at what point do all these millions in “temporary layoffs” become permanent.

Looking at the details of the jobs report, the largest employment increases in July occurred in leisure and hospitality, government, retail trade, professional and business services, other services, and health care.

• Employment in leisure and hospitality increased by 592,000, accounting for about one-third of the gain in total nonfarm employment in July. Employment in food services and drinking places rose by 502,000, following gains of 2.9 million in May and June combined. Despite the gains over the last 3 months, employment in food services and drinking places is down by 2.6 million since February. Over the month, employment also rose in amusements, gambling, and recreation (+100,000).
• Government employment rose by 301,000 in July but is 1.1 million below its February level. Typically, public-sector education employment declines in July (before seasonal adjustment). However, employment declines occurred earlier than usual this year due to the pandemic, resulting in unusually large July increases in local government education (+215,000) and state government education (+30,000) after seasonal adjustment. A July job gain in federal government (+27,000) reflected the hiring of temporary workers for the 2020 Census.
• In July, retail trade added 258,000 jobs. Employment in the industry is 913,000 lower than in February. In July, nearly half of the job gain in retail trade occurred in clothing and clothing accessories stores (+121,000). By contrast, the component of general merchandise stores that includes warehouse clubs and supercenters lost jobs (-64,000).
• Employment in professional and business services increased in July (+170,000) but remains 1.6 million below its February level. The majority of July’s gain occurred in temporary help services (+144,000).
• In July, the other services industry added 149,000 jobs, with most of the increase occurring in personal and laundry services (+119,000). Since February, employment in other services is down by 627,000.
• In July, health care added 126,000 jobs, with employment growth in offices of dentists (+45,000), hospitals (+27,000), offices of physicians (+26,000), and home health care services (+16,000). Job losses continued in nursing and residential care facilities (-28,000). Employment in health care is down by 797,000 since February.
• In July, employment in social assistance increased by 66,000, with child day care services accounting for most of the gain (+45,000). Employment in social assistance is 460,000 lower than in February.
• Employment in transportation and warehousing rose by 38,000 in July, following an increase of 87,000 in June. Despite job gains over the past 2 months, employment in the industry is down by 470,000 since a recent peak in January. In July, employment rose in transit and ground passenger transportation (+20,000), air transportation (+16,000), and couriers and messengers (+9,000).
• Manufacturing employment increased by 26,000 in July. An employment gain in motor vehicles and parts (+39,000) was partially offset by losses in fabricated metal products (-11,000), machinery (-7,000), and computer and electronic products (-6,000). Although manufacturing has added 623,000 jobs over the past 3 months, employment is 740,000 lower than in February.
• Financial activities added 21,000 jobs in July, with most of the gain in real estate and rental and leasing (+15,000). Since February, employment in financial activities is down by 216,000.
• In July, construction employment changed little (+20,000), following job gains of 619,000 in May and June combined. However, employment in the industry remains 444,000 below its February level.
• Mining continued to shed jobs in July (-7,000), reflecting a loss in support activities for mining (-11,000). Mining has lost 127,000 jobs since a recent peak in January 2019, although nearly three-fourths of this decline has occurred since February 2020.