States of Unemployment – WSJ

Friday’s employment report for July shows the labor market continues to improve, despite a setback from the surge in coronavirus infections this summer in the South and West. The progress should continue without overly strict lockdowns and policy mistakes by Congress.

The private economy created 1.46 million jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 10.2% from 11.1%. But the labor-force participation rate fell a mere 0.1 points to 61.4%. This suggests that the surge of workers returning from the sidelines in May and June slowed…