While the U.S. unemployment rate has dropped to 7.6% in September, data shows that hiring of workers has slowed down with many Americans giving up on looking for work during the pandemic. Only 660,000 jobs were brought back or created in September. Since the government does not count people that are unemployed BUT are not actively looking for a job, the fall in the unemployment rate from 8.4% in August is mainly a reflection of the decline in people looking for work rather than a surge in hiring. Businesses in the travel and tourism industry continue with layoffs and the number of laid-off workers with permanent job loss rose from 3.4 million to 3.8 million. With the uncertainty and fear from the pandemic, some are saying that it could take until 2023 for the job market to fully recover.
Women and minorities (African Americans and Hispanics) have bared the brunt of the recession with more women leaving the workforce compared to men to either help their children with at-home schooling or industries such as retail and health being hit hard by the recession. Unemployment for African Americans and Hispanics,12.1% and 10.3% respectively, are still considerably higher than it for whites at 7%.
https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-us-news-economy-bda32f552bd450be2b804131cd5d49e6
It is interesting to see that the economy is almost reverting back to the way it used to be. By the way it used to be, I mean women and minorities losing their positions in the job market. There is concern that some jobs won't be returning anytime in the near future. Decades of hard work for these groups has just been wiped away and it will be interesting to see how it will continue to affect the economy as a whole and GDP.
ReplyDeleteOh for sure. Jobs in the travel/tourism industry will likely take a while to recover even a semblance of what it used to be before the pandemic. Even if a vaccine is developed, there is still that underlying fear with traveling so until people's perceptions gets better or cautiousness is lessened, those industries will be take the most time to recover.
DeleteI think it will take awhile for the unemployment numbers to go back down to where they were before the pandemic. Like Mary said, even with a vaccine, people will still be skeptical about going out in public and putting themselves back into the workforce.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point made about how different groups are being affected by unemployment rates differently post-covid. I had knew about specific sectors like tourism and travel but not demographics.
ReplyDelete