Employment Trends In The Time Of COVID-19

It would be a bit of an understatement to say the COVID-19 has changed employment across America in 2020.  Back in April unemployment peaked at 14.7% with over 23 million people unemployed (not 40 million as the mainstream media continues to falsely claim). 

I’ve done a few posts about unemployment and the recovery of jobs to highlight mapping tools.  For this post I want to discuss some employment trends that the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently posted.

 

Early COVID Losses

The BLS took a look at job losses that occurred through April in the early days of the COVID pandemic and lock downs.  In February there were about 152 million jobs total in America, and as I stated we had lost about 23 million of them by late April (again for effect – not 40 million!!).  To be fully clear, that is non-farm employment and that’s how official employment is calculated and always has been. 

How did these losses look by industry?  From the BLS report:

The leisure and hospitality industry, including restaurants, hotels, and amusements, saw the largest percentage decline, down 49.3 percent from February. Other industries saw percentage declines similar to the overall total, such as retail trade (decline of 15.2 percent) and construction (decline of 14.2 percent). And some industries experienced small declines, such as financial activities (decline of 3.2 percent). These differences stem from many factors, including stay-at-home orders, the need for workers in essential industries, the ability for some work to be done remotely, and on and on.

Here’s the chart:

The decline in leisure and hospitality makes total sense and matches with what I saw in my local area.  The bottom 3 on the chart are also logical.  Utilities are still needed regardless of a pandemic, people were still spending and moving money, and governments don’t need to make a profit so they were less likely to lay people off.

 

Don’t Call It A Comeback

Now let’s look at how things started to recover.  As my post about the recovery of jobs detailed, it was a surprisingly fast recovery, to me at least.  But with unemployment still at 8.4% compared to 3.5% pre-COVID, we’re far from fully recovered.

From the BLS report:

By August, about 10.6 million jobs were added to employer payrolls. One way to look at these figures is to consider what share of the March/April job loss was “recovered” by the May/June/July/August job gain. Overall, 47.9 percent of the decline was recovered. The retail trade industry restored the greatest percentage of job losses, 72.5 percent, followed by other services (including barbers and salons, 61.2 percent) and construction (60.8 percent). Education and health services recovered 47.6 percent of lost jobs, nearly equal to the overall percentage of jobs recovered, as did manufacturing (47.2 percent). Utilities, mining and logging, and the information industry had fewer jobs in August than in April.

Here’s the chart:

Notice that retail trade posted the best recovery, besting out leisure and hospitality which had the worst decline.  Leisure and hospitality did recover at a slightly better rate than the overall average, but considering the big hit that industry took it’s clear to see that many who work in that industry are still suffering and likely on unemployment benefits. 

Also of note, mining and logging, utilities, and information got worse, so it appears the effects of COVID lock downs hit those industries in a delayed fashion.

 

Employment Trends In Some Industries

The BLS report looked into some industries in detail and it’s fascinating to see the variance within in an industry.  Here’s there analysis of differences in the the health care sector:

Within health care from February to April, hospital employment showed a slight decline while offices of physicians lost about 11 percent of jobs. In contrast, offices of dentists declined by 56 percent, losing more than half a million jobs. As of August, employment had rebounded in most health care industries, with the notable exception of nursing and residential care facilities, which has declined each month since February. 

And the chart:

Note that jobs in nursing and residential care facilities have been in continual decline since April.  I’ve heard of the financial losses that hospitals have incurred due to the lack of elective surgeries, but I’m not enough of an expert to give reasons behind this.  If any of my healthcare or nurse readers want to chime in please comment below. 

The sharp recovery in dentists doesn’t surprise me.  Almost all were completely shut down in the early days of lock down.  Most quickly implemented COVID safety procedures and are now at least open, but probably still losing money I would assume. 

Here are some more industries:

This makes sense to me.  Food and beverage stores as well as general merchandise stores have been steady since we all still had to go grocery shopping and buy essential items.  But non-essential stores like clothing and department stores took huge hits, then started roaring back as people got COVID fatigue and started to go out again. 

Also note that building material and garden supply stores, food and beverage stores, and general merchandise stores are now above their February employment numbers.  General merchandise stores seem to be the biggest winner, and that sector has gained quite a lot of jobs from COVID.

 

Job Postings

Because I go above and beyond here at Accidental FIRE I found this very scholarly paper about the change in job postings after COVID.  Here’s an interesting chart from the paper:

Some of those industry changes make sense to me, but many don’t.  For instance, why would electrical equipment manufacturing incur so many less job postings?  I admittedly haven’t read the whole paper, but I do like to dork out on stuff like this and learn. 

It will be interesting to see the continual (hopefully) recovery in the job market as COVID plods on, and you can trust me to keep you informed about employment trends with lots of geeky data and analysis!