Teleperformance recognized for its sustained growth and commitment to building a better world
PARIS, November 26, 2021–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Regulatory News:
Teleperformance (Paris:TEP), a leading global group in digitally integrated business services, announced today that it has been ranked 10th among the most responsible companies in France and second on social performance in particular. The Group is also number one in its sector.
For this second annual ranking drawn up by Le Point magazine, the independent institute Statista analyzed 2,000 French companies with more than 500 employees and ranked France’s most responsible companies based on environment, social and governance criteria. The analysis was informed by a survey aimed at collecting 27 objective criteria per company and a survey of a sample of 5,000 people.
Teleperformance’s position in the ranking reflects its strong commitment to corporate social responsibility, especially its ongoing initiatives to foster employee well-being and its promotion of diversity and inclusion.
Treating every employee with respect has always been a top priority for the Group. Diversity, inclusion, equality, trust and camaraderie are core values at Teleperformance, which was recently recognized as one of the 25 World’s Best Workplaces in 2021 by Fortune magazine and Great Place to Work®, across all industries.
Teleperformance is committed to listening to its employees on an ongoing basis, whether through satisfaction surveys, actively encouraged open dialogue with management, or continuous dialogue with representative bodies. The Group aims to develop best human resources practices in every market where it operates.
Teleperformance is particularly committed to diversity, equality and inclusion in all its forms. In terms of gender equality, the Group has set ambitious targets and achieved very good results, with a workplace gender equality index of 99/100. It has also developed inclusion programs for many years. In 2020, for example, it had 70,000 employees from minority or disadvantaged groups, and provided a start in the working world to 85,000 people worldwide.
“The outcome of the Statista assessment, which placed Teleperformance among the most responsible companies in France, reflects the culture of integration, diversity and environmental stewardship that drives us. It also confirms the rankings published in October, listing Teleperformance as one of the 25 World’s Best Workplaces by Fortune magazine and the Great Place to Work® Institute. Contributing more with every success gives meaning to our actions”, said Daniel Julien, Teleperformance Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
ABOUT TELEPERFORMANCE GROUP
Teleperformance (TEP – ISIN: FR0000051807 – Reuters: TEPRF.PA – Bloomberg: TEP FP), a leading global group in digitally integrated business services, serves as a strategic partner to the world’s largest companies in many industries. It offers a One Office support services model combining three wide, high-value solution families: customer experience management, back-office services and business process knowledge services. These end-to-end digital solutions guarantee successful customer interaction and optimized business processes, anchored in a unique, comprehensive high tech, high touch approach. The Group’s 380,000+ employees, based in 83 countries, support billions of connections every year in over 265 languages and over 170 markets, in a shared commitment to excellence as part of the “Simpler, Faster, Safer” process. This mission is supported by the use of reliable, flexible, intelligent technological solutions and compliance with the industry’s highest security and quality standards, based on Corporate Social Responsibility excellence. In 2020, Teleperformance reported consolidated revenue of €5,732 million (US$6.5 billion, based on €1 = $1.14) and net profit of €324 million.
Teleperformance shares are traded on the Euronext Paris market, Compartment A, and are eligible for the deferred settlement service. They are included in the following indices: CAC 40, CAC Support Services, STOXX 600, S&P Europe 350 and MSCI Global Standard. In the area of corporate social responsibility, Teleperformance shares are included in the Euronext Vigeo Eurozone 120 index, the FTSE4Good index and the Solactive Europe Corporate Social Responsibility index (formerly Ethibel Sustainability Excellence Europe index).
FINANCIAL ANALYSTS AND INVESTORS Investor relations and financial communication department TELEPERFORMANCE Tel: +33 1 53 83 59 15 investor@teleperformance.com
The rally in Tesla’s shares has lifted the overall stock market value of Elon Musk’s electric carmaker to over $1.1tn, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. This year alone it has added almost $475bn in market capitalisation, equal to a Procter & Gamble, a JPMorgan — or two McDonald’s.
However, the real importance and wider footprint of what might be called the “Tesla-financial complex” far outstrips the company’s market capitalisation. This is thanks to a vast, tangled web of dependent investment vehicles, corporate emulators and an enormous associated derivatives market of unparalleled breadth, depth and hyperactivity.
Combined, these factors mean Tesla’s influence over the ebb and flow of the stock market is far greater than even its size would imply. It may even be historically unrivalled in its wider impact, some analysts say.
“We don’t really have the language to describe Tesla any more,” says Michael Green, chief strategist at Simplify Asset Management. “It’s like explaining to a person in a two-dimensional world the concept of ‘up’.”
The Tesla-financial complex is a phenomenon that many investors — whether passive index funds, traditional mutual funds, hedge funds or ordinary retail investors — have no choice but to contend with, given the idiosyncratic force it now exerts over the stock market.
“It stands out like a sore thumb,” says Dean Curnutt, the chief executive of Macro Risk Advisors. “It’s something you’ve got to pay a lot of attention to.”
One of Tesla’s oddest quirks is the fuel that has helped power its rocketing stock market value. Although its stock is wildly popular with many ordinary retail investors, the swelling size and hyperactivity of Tesla “options” — popular derivatives contracts that allow investors to bet both on and against a stock and magnify any gains and losses — has also flabbergasted many market veterans.
The nominal trading value of Tesla options has averaged $241bn a day in recent weeks, according to Goldman Sachs. That compares with $138bn a day for Amazon, the second most active single-stock option market, and $112bn a day for the rest of the S&P 500 index combined. This makes Tesla’s stock more prone to whipsaw movements, because of the “leverage” inherent in using options to trade.
“The Tesla options volume has always been outsized, but it is now huge,” says Michael Golding, the US head of trading at Optiver, a firm active in the options market. “Tesla almost represents a generation. It’s come to represent innovation, at a time when option trading has taken off.”
The Tesla options market — more than 60 times as active as the entire FTSE 100 options market, and almost seven times greater than Euro Stoxx 50 options — has helped push US option trading volumes above actual stock trading volumes this year.
Tesla accounts for a big chunk of that aberration. In November options trading was 50 per cent higher than stock trading in nominal terms, and without Tesla and Amazon it would have been 20 per cent lower, according to Goldman Sachs. “The combination of a high market cap and extraordinary option activity make Tesla a critical driver,” the investment bank said in a note.
Golding estimates that historically the combined trading activity in US equity options has been between 10 and 20 times larger than activity in the biggest individual equity options market. However, there have been days recently where Tesla’s option trading activity has been five-to-six times the rest of the S&P 500 options ecosystem combined. “The size of the Tesla options market is absolutely enormous,” he says.
The value of options depend on what the underlying shares do, but due to their complex mechanics analysts say the option tail can occasionally wag the equity dog if there is enough activity in them, and even bleed into the broader stock market — adding to its churn and making it harder to navigate for many investors.
Curnutt points out that it is unprecedented to have such a huge stock that is also so volatile, and moves to the beat of its own drum. For example, the swelling heft of Tesla’s stock and options market is one of the reasons why the Vix volatility index has diverged so sharply from actual US equity market volatility lately, he argues. “Tesla is its own animal,” he said. “It changes how markets price risk.”
Who will bet against Tesla?
Ordinary retail investors have been the primary power behind the Tesla options boom, but some of them have more resources to make bigger leveraged bets on Musk’s company than others.
IT billionaire Leo KoGuan recently said that he had by early November accumulated almost 7.2m shares in Tesla. They had largely been accumulated through aggressive purchases of Tesla call options — which give buyers the right to buy shares at a pre-agreed price within a certain time period — and offer a popular route to boost gains. Bloomberg previously verified the growing size of his direct equity stake and options investments, and in September, Tesla’s investor relations head Martin Viecha confirmed KoGuan’s original claim.
That would make him Tesla’s third-biggest individual shareholder, behind Musk and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, with a stake worth almost $8bn, and has made him a hero on Reddit forums dedicated to the carmaker and trading. “Leo KoGuan = Tesla God”, one thread declared.
“He’s trading a lot of options, we can definitely see his footprint in the market and he’s inspiring others,” Golding says. “It’s almost as if he’s waving the Tesla flag and people on Reddit see him as someone they can follow.”
Tesla’s fame and the volatility of its stock have also started to make it a component in some structured investment products, such as “auto-callables”, further enmeshing its shares into the fate of the broader financial ecosystem.
Auto-callables are complex savings vehicles — particularly popular with Asian investors — where bankers construct an attractive, bond-like fixed return by selling stock options. Historically they have been mostly options on broad stock market indices such as the S&P 500, Hang Seng or Nikkei, but because of falling market volatility some bankers have started to structure them with options on choppier individual stocks. Tesla has emerged as a popular choice.
“Tesla is perceived as safe because it is big and at the technological vanguard, but it’s incredibly lucrative [for investors] to put into structured products because it is so volatile,” says Simplify’s Green.
The frenetic rally in Tesla has also buoyed money management groups such as Cathy Wood’s Ark Invest and Baillie Gifford, which have bet heavily on the electric carmaker. But there is a flipside. Its gains have left a huge and growing blot on the performance of many other investors with only negligible or modest positions in Tesla relative to its big heft in their benchmarks — or “underweight” in market jargon — due to what many see as its wildly inflated valuation.
US mutual funds focused on growth stocks suffered their worst bout of underperformance in at least two decades in October, largely due to the carmaker’s rally. For US mutual fund managers as a whole, Tesla alone crimped their relative performance by 0.46 of a percentage point in October, according to Wells Fargo analysts, helping turn what was heading towards being a decent year into yet another mediocre one for stockpickers.
“Managers that have been underweight Tesla have certainly been punished,” says Drew Dickson, chief investment officer at Albert Bridge Capital. “It’s been a sizeable driver of underperformance for many. You have to wonder whether a lot of them are now holding it simply due to fears they’re going to lag.”
Betting against Tesla has been particularly painful. Hedge funds that have shorted Tesla shares over the past decade are sitting on cumulative losses of over $60bn, according to S3 Partners, a financial analytics company. Just this year the losses have come to $11bn.
The “short interest” in Tesla — the percentage of shares that have been lent out to and sold by hedge funds — has now fallen from 20 per cent at the start of 2020 to just 3.3 per cent by mid-November, according to S3. A sign, industry insiders say, that fund managers are now reluctant to risk their careers betting against a stock that has defied financial gravity for so long.
Prominent bears keep falling by the wayside. Michael Burry, the hedge fund manager made famous by author Michael Lewis in The Big Short and portrayed by Christian Bale in the film of the same name, last year called Tesla’s stock price “ridiculous” and revealed that he was shorting it. But in October he said he had ended the trade and closed out the short position.
“It’s the original meme stock,” says Green, referring to companies like GameStop that have gained sky-high valuations off the back of social media hype. “Shorting Tesla is just an ego trade at this stage. Tesla has been a primary contributor to destroying the credibility of active management over the past few years.”
Underscoring its financial idiosyncrasy, Tesla stock tends to not be much affected by other market and economic trends, but correlates somewhat with bitcoin, according to analysis by Quant Insight.
At the moment Tesla’s shares seem to be benefiting from a “mixed bag” of factors, such as rising inflation expectations, tighter dollar conditions and uncertain credit markets, but “Tesla spends a lot of time out of [recognisable] macro regimes — unsurprising when it is often driven by idiosyncratic factors like Elon’s tweets,” says Huw Roberts, head of analytics at Quant Insight. A macro regime is industry jargon for how different economic environments can hurt or help certain stocks or sectors.
The success of Tesla’s stock has also helped inflate what some analysts and fund managers think is a broader bubble in anything related to electric vehicles. Tesla-emulators Rivian and Lucid are now valued at about $110bn and $90bn, respectively, despite having negligible revenues and no profits.
An index of EV and electric battery companies compiled by the FT has a combined market capitalisation of almost $1.8tn. In contrast, automotive giants Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai, the biggest car manufacturers in the world, are worth about $254bn, $135bn and $42bn, respectively.
“There’s obviously a big halo effect with anything electric vehicle-related at the moment, thanks to Tesla,” says Benjamin Bowler, an equity derivatives strategist at Bank of America.
Even Nikola, an electric truck start-up that has set aside $125m to settle fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission over claims that it misled investors about its technology, is still valued at $5.4bn. That is enough to qualify it for the blue-chip S&P 500 index — if it had ever made any profit.
If Tesla’s ascent continues it will further enrich believers, hurt the dwindling band of doubters and drag swaths of the broader equity market up with it. But if it were to fall sharply, it could cause ripples through financial markets that are far in excess of what many appreciate.
Tesla did drop as much as 17.6 per cent in November before rallying once more, without the fall triggering any major ripples. But even this decline only took it back to its October level, and a bigger, more sustained drop could prove more impactful.
“There is a huge, recursive ‘tail wagging the dog’ nature to the valuation of a lot of things these days,” says Dickson. “I’m unwavering in my belief that ultimately the fundamentals are what matters. But over the past few years I can see that the short and intermediate term is far more dominated by flow, momentum, memes and appetites.”
He recalls the financial analyst Ben Graham’s adage that the stock market is a voting machine in the short run, but a weighing machine in the longer run. “In the current environment, I think we’re spending a lot more time voting,” says Dickson.
Additional reporting by Jamie Powell, Philip Stafford and Harriet Agnew in London
FOX Business contributor reacts to the Biden administration’s cash bail policy on ‘FOX Business Tonight
GoFundMe has removed a fundraiser for Darrell Brooks Jr., who has been charged with five counts of first-degree intentional homicide after Sunday’s Christmas parade massacre in Waukesha.
A GoFundMe was created for Brooks in an effort to raise $5 million, the bail amount Waukesha Court Commissioner Kevin M. Costello set for Brooks.
Brooks allegedly drove through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing at least six people and injuring dozens.
A spokesperson for GoFundMe confirmed to FOX Business that the fundraiser was removed from the platform because it violated the GoFundMe Terms of Service.
Waukesha parade suspect Darrell Brooks arrives in court for his arraignment.
The spokesperson also said that the organizer attempting to raise money for Brooks has been banned from using the platform for future fundraisers.
“Fundraisers with misuse are very rare, and we take all complaints very seriously. Our team works with law enforcement to report issues and assists them in any investigations they deem necessary,” the spokesperson said.
GoFundMe has come under criticism recently after the Kyle Rittenhouse trial verdict. GoFundMe says that since Rittenhouse was acquitted of a “violent crime,” money could now be raised for him using the platform. Previously, fundraisers for a Rittenhouse legal defense were prohibited on the site.
“If someone is acquitted of those charges, as Rittenhouse was today, a fundraiser started subsequently for their legal defense and other expenses would not violate this policy,” the statement said. “A fundraiser to pay lawyers, cover legal expenses or to help with ongoing living expenses for a person acquitted of those charges could remain active as long as we determine it is not in violation of any of our other terms and, for example, the purpose is clearly stated and the correct beneficiary is added to the fundraiser.”
Police and emergency responders gather after a vehicle plowed through a Christmas parade, leaving multiple people injured in Waukesha, Wis., Nov. 21, 2021. (Scott Ash-USA TODAY NETWORK via REUTERS / Reuters Photos)
GOFUNDME SAYS RITTENHOUSE FUNDRAISING OK NOW THAT HE IS ACQUITTED
However, GoFundMe allowed fundraisers for the defense of people accused of violent crimes around the same time as the Rittenhouse defense fundraisers were pulled from the site.
Marc Wilson, for example, had a fundraiser on GoFundMe set up by others to pay for his legal defense after he allegedly shot and killed a 17-year-old girl, claiming he did so in self-defense.
The fundraiser for Wilson was active as of Nov. 21 but has since been taken down. It was created on July 1, 2020.
Kyle Rittenhouse talks about how Gaige Grosskreutz was holding his gun when Rittenhouse shot him Aug. 25, 2020. Rittenhouse was testifying during his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., Nov. 10, 2021. (Sean Krajacic/Pool via REUTERS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY / Reuters Photos)
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS
“It is too early to tell if GoFundMe now will be consistent or whether this is simply a reaction to the negative fallout regarding Rittenhouse,” William Jacobson, clinical professor and director of the securities law clinic at Cornell University Law School, told Fox News.
“The bigger question is why GoFundMe will not permit fundraising for legal defense of people accused but not convicted. It seems illogical to say that someone can raise money to defend themselves but only after they are acquitted, when they no longer need funds to defend themselves,” Jacobson said.
Fox News’ Michael Ruiz, Stephanie Pagones, and Breck Dumas contributed to this report
RIA consolidator Cerity Partners has acquired Bingham, Osborn & Scarborough, a $5 billion registered investment advisory firm in San Francisco, a move that expands Cerity’s West Coast footprint and brings its total client assets to more than $40 billion under advisement.
The B|O|S team, led by CEO Kevin Dorwin and President and Chief Operating Officer Carol Benz, will become part of Cerity. The RIA has also reorganized its leadership structure as a result, naming Benz its chief people officer, a new role designed to oversee the recruitment, development, education, engagement, diversity and growth of Cerity’s people and culture. B|O|S principal David Newson will become chief marketing officer of Cerity. Dorwin will become Cerity’s San Francisco market leader.
Related: RIA Edge: Updating Growth Strategies for RIAs With Cerity Partners’ Claire O’Keefe
B|O|S was founded in 1985 and serves high-net-worth individuals and families in the Bay Area, providing comprehensive financial planning, investment management, and trust and estate planning.
“The merger allows us to enhance our clients’ experience and broaden the breadth and depth of our expertise,” said Cerity Partners CEO and President Kurt Miscinski, in a statement. “It also significantly deepens our presence in and commitment to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, a region that continues to create meaningful wealth for many individuals and families.”
Related: Mindy Diamond on Independence: The Catalysts Behind the Growth of Mega-Firm Cerity Partners
Cerity, which was founded in 2009, is backed by private equity firm Lightyear Capital, which bought a 50{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} stake in the consolidator in 2018 from Emigrant Bank. Cerity has been slowly amassing a sizeable talent pool.
In 2020, it acquired $5 billion in assets under management from four acquisitions. In January 2020, it acquired Los Angeles RIA Sullivan & Serqitz and Chicago-based EMM Wealth. In December, Cerity announced it had added two firms, Algonquin Advisors in Greenwich, Conn. and Worldview Wealth Advisors in San Francisco that pushed its assets up to $27 billion.
Earlier this year, Cerity announced its acquisition of Bainco International Investors, a Boston asset manager and wealth planning firm with $1.1 billion in assets under management.
In a recent RIA Edge podcast, Claire O’Keefe, partner and head of corporate development at Cerity, reveals how the firm was able to become one of the top RIAs for individuals, businesses and nonprofits, and how they have fostered long-term, sustainable growth for their business.
The certified financial planner, or CFP, designation is often considered the standard of excellence for financial planners. It’s a mark of an advisor’s commitment to providing the best holistic advice to clients, one that requires extensive study and experience.
“The CFP is the most comprehensive financial planning designation and demonstrates a broad knowledge of topics ranging from investments to taxes and estate planning,” says Bryan Koslow, a CFP and principal of Clarus Group. With certificants adhering to rigorous studying, testing and ethical standards to hold the CFP mark, it can be a good way of differentiating them from the pack.
Current financial professionals can become CFPs, as can students or career-changers looking to enter the financial planning field.
Wherever you start your CFP journey, it’s important to know what it means to be a CFP and what it’s like becoming and working as one before you start. Here’s what to know about earning your CFP.
What Is a CFP?
A CFP is a financial professional who has met the training and experience requirements of the CFP Board, passed the CFP certification exam and committed to the CFP Board’s ethical standards, which require them to put their clients’ interests first.
Of the five professional designations Kasey Gartner, a CFP and wealth management advisor at Northwestern Mutual, has received, she says the CFP is “by far the most valuable.” It’s been one of the “greatest gifts” to her career, she says.
“Initially, holding the CFP designation served as a differentiator among other advisors,” she says. “Now, I consider it almost a baseline for advisors looking to do true planning for their clients, and for clients looking for a holistic and comprehensive advisor.”
How to Become a CFP
To become a CFP, you must complete the CFP Board’s “Four Es:” education, exam, experience and ethics.
The education component requires applicants to have a bachelor’s degree and complete a CFP Board registered program. The bachelor’s degree can be in any discipline as long as it’s from an accredited university. Most people take 12 to 18 months to complete the CFP coursework requirement, according to the CFP Board. While advisors have to finish the CFP Board’s coursework before taking the exam, they have five years from when they pass the exam to get their bachelor’s degree.
CFP applicants also have five years from when they pass the exam to fulfill the experience requirement of either 6,000 hours of professional experience related to financial planning or 4,000 hours of apprenticeship experience under the direct supervision of a CFP professional.
While you can take the exam before getting industry experience, having several years of experience in the industry first can be beneficial, says Andrew Schultz, a CFP and partner and wealth management advisor with Clarity Financial Planning Group, a Northwestern Mutual private client group. “There isn’t a substitute for time invested and firsthand experience working with clients through various planning situations.”
The CFP exam is a six-hour test taken in two three-hour sessions during a single day. It consists of 170 multiple-choice questions, including stand-alone, scenario-based and case-study questions. In July 2021, 62{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} of exam-takers passed the test.
“Studying for the exam is a major commitment and is usually done while maintaining a full-time work schedule,” Schultz says. Be prepared to spend many evenings and weekends studying.
“You can leverage technology by listening to audio recordings while driving and taking online prep courses,” he says. “It’s important to really immerse yourself in the content in order to be properly prepared for the exam.”
Gartner took an intensive review course between completing her coursework and taking the exam. She strongly encourages any CFP candidates to do the same. She also recommends creating a calendar with deadlines for when you intend to complete each of the required courses and a target date for taking the exam.
“It’s not enough to work in financial services for years and complete the coursework,” she says. “You must prepare for the exam and structure your environment for success.”
The final step in becoming a CFP is to meet the ethics requirement and pass the CFP Board’s background check. Applicants will be required to sign the CFP Board ethics declaration and commit to the CFP Board’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct. These are an expansion of the fiduciary standard, which requires advisors to always act in their clients’ best interests.
“Being held to a fiduciary standard as a CFP professional allows for clients and prospects to trust our process even more, knowing we will always put their needs first,” says Gartner, who worked as a fiduciary before becoming a CFP.
What Do CFPs Do for Work?
CFPs can work at large banking or financial institutions or at smaller, independent firms. Some CFPs choose to start their own practices, while others prefer to work under the umbrella of a larger firm.
CFPs can fill many roles within the financial field, both in financial planning and investment advising roles. Some of the most common financial planning positions held by CFPs include personal financial planners, client services advisors, associate advisors and wealth management advisors. On the investment side, CFPs may serve as portfolio managers, financial analysts or investment managers.
Regardless of the job title, almost all financial planning CFP jobs involve working closely with clients to construct holistic financial plans.
“We work intimately with people to plan some of their biggest life decisions such as whether to start a family, make a career change, take care of aging family members and when to retire,” Koslow says. “Every day is different because every set of client circumstances is unique.”
In many ways, working as a CFP is no different than working without the designation, Schultz says. “People still need your help, and the products and services you can offer are often the same. The biggest difference is the knowledge you gain allows you to better understand the various elements of someone’s financial situation and how they all fit together.”
The typical salary for a CFP varies by job role. For instance, in salary-based compensation models, analysts typically earn between $47,000 and $62,000, while lead advisors or managing directors earn between $125,000 and $262,000, according to an InvestmentNews compensation and staffing study. These roles may also include bonuses or other compensation, such as a percentage of revenue.
As a mentor for aspiring CFPs, Koslow encourages applicants to follow their passion and see what areas of financial planning interest them most. “There are so many ways that CFPs can help clients,” he says. “It’s a lot easier to be successful in this business if you love what you do.”
The number of Americans applying for first-time jobless claims reached the lowest level since November 1969, with the number of filings dropping to 199,000.
Improvements in the labor market have been broad-based, with the weekly rate of those rendered newly unemployed falling precipitously across the country since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic last year.
As usual, the Labor Department’s latest weekly report included a breakdown of the states and territories with the highest and lowest insured unemployment rates, or the ratio of people claiming jobless benefits divided by the overall size of the labor force. For a number of states, this key labor market metric improved to its best level in two years, showing an even smaller proportion of their populations were claiming jobless benefits than before the coronavirus outbreak.
“I don’t even think you can call it an economic recovery anymore,” Chris Rupkey, chief economist for FWDBONDS, told Yahoo Finance Live. “Remember the best economy in 50 years late in 2019? Well, we’re way, way, way above that right now. I don’t even think you can call this a reopening of the economy after the pandemic — we’re miles and miles ahead of the fourth quarter of 2019.”
South Dakota was the state with the lowest insured unemployment rate. As of the week ended Nov. 6, the state’s rate was at 0.2{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} on a seasonally unadjusted basis. The last time this figure was below that level was in October 2019.
The national average insured unemployment rate was at 1.3{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} for the same week, or the lowest since December 2019. At its worst pandemic-era point in May 2020, during widespread lockdowns and layoffs, the insured unemployment rate peaked at 15.9{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} nationally.
Other states also posted insured unemployment rates well below the national average. Alabama’s insured unemployment rate for the week ended Nov. 6 came in at 0.3{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}, or the lowest on record for the state based on data spanning back to the 1980s. Nebraska’s rate also came in at 0.3{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} for the period, marking a two-year low.
Five states — Kansas, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Utah and Virginia — posted insured unemployment rates of 0.4{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} for the start of November, also representing a marked improvement from their pandemic-era highs.
A little less than half of U.S. states and territories — or 19 in total — posted insured unemployment rates at or above the national average at the start of the month. Of these, the Virgin Islands saw the highest rate at 3.0{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}, which marked a slight uptick from the prior week’s 2.2{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} rate. Still, this was well below its pandemic-era peak of nearly 18{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} in June 2020.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and Alaska each posted insured unemployment rates of 2.7{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}, tying for the second-highest rates in the nation, based on the latest data. California followed close behind with an insured unemployment rate of 2.6{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}. Many of the states posting persistently elevated insured unemployment rates have been those that rely heavily on tourism and their service economies, given the ongoing recovery still taking place in these industries after the outbreak.
“Workers remain in high demand in a labor market where payrolls and the civilian labor force remain well below pre-pandemic levels,” wrote Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, in a note Wednesday morning. “Developments on the health front remain a risk that may weigh on labor supply, but we expect workers to gradually return to the labor market, as the cushion from savings diminishes, supporting job growth over coming months.”
