The top line numbers in today's Employment Situation news release from the BLS showed net job losses in the establishment survey (-62,000), making for a total of 438,000 net jobs (0.32%) lost since the December peak, and the unemployment rate holding steady at 5.5 percent.

With more bad news, we are likely to hear news reports about the unequal burden of the labor market contraction.  I was curious in particular to see how female heads of household were faring.  The BLS reports their unemployment rate on a seasonally unadjusted basis, so the following chart shows 40 years of annual data, measured in June of each year, for all persons (in the civilian noninstitutionalized population) 16 and over, all women 16 and over, and all female heads of household:

A few features of the chart stand out: 

The real-time assessment of whether we are in a recession got nudged a bit more toward "negative" today as the BEA released the preliminary GDP figures. Real GDP is estimated to have grown at a 0.9% annual rate, up from the advance estimate of 0.6% released last month. The explanation of the revisions:

The upward revision to the percent change in real GDP primarily reflected a downward revision to imports and upward revisions to nonresidential structures and to PCE for nondurable goods that were partly offset by downward revisions to private inventory investment, to exports, and to PCE for services.

That we are not in a recession, based on weak GDP growth and a host of other macroeconomic indicators that have been flat since last summer, is quite remarkable.  Here's the path of quarterly investment as a share of GDP:

Note that the fall in residential investment has been just as large and even steeper than the decline in equipment and software investment that was the driver of the last recession. Equipment and software investment fell to and has hovered around the share of GDP that it was in 1993.  Residential investment has fallen to that level.  It's not clear when the fall will stop.