The The Hello and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood. Two guests today as is traditional.

We'll hear from the Economist Max Swicky and why the Postal Service is so troubled and what we might do to rescue it.

And we'll hear from the historian and securities analyst Kelly Grotky about the financial crisis

in US higher education.

Dining Hall workers being fired while private equity guys make billions running the endowments.

A few words about the economic situation.

Although this show is originally prepared for broadcasts on Thursday October 1st, because of some technical difficulties now resolved, I didn't unleash it for a wider distribution until the weekend.

So now I can say a few things about the September Employment Report that was released on Friday morning.

The report is a composite of two surveys,

one of employers, hundreds of thousands of them,

and one of households, about 60,000 of them.

The employer survey shows that we now have regained

just over half the jobs lost between

February and April, but the pace of gain slowed for the third consecutive month.

Sectors that added the most jobs included retail trade and bars and

restaurants, both of which have been savaged by COVID-19 closures.

But government employment, particularly state and local government education, lost over

200,000 workers.

Looking over the longer term, few sectors are anywhere near recovering the losses of March and April, despite consistent gain since May.

Continuing a theme, retail, and bars and restaurants have regained a substantial portion of lost jobs,

retail about 80% in bars and restaurants just over 60.

Construction is also done better than average, also just over 60%.

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