November Employment Outlook
To say the least, it’s been a long year. The pandemic shook up our sense of safety and stability and resulted in millions of layoffs. And while there has been a steady rebound since unemployment peaked in April, new surges in the virus have a lot of people questioning how the recovery will continue.
Though many have continued to struggle, there are certain industries that are thriving. Warehousing, for example, has seen a massive boom from online shopping over the past few months. And while holiday hiring isn’t happening in the same way it does most years - more than half of holiday shoppers are looking to minimize in-store shopping resulting in few retail opportunities - there are still a wide variety of companies hiring extra help in preparation for the holiday season.
So what does hiring really look like right now? The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics’ news release on Friday, November 6th, offers insight into current employment trends across the nation. Learn more about our key takeaways from the report or scroll down for an infographic with some of the most important statistics.
- Employment recovery may be slowing down. The number of employed people continued to grow this month (up 638,000!), but this number was more than 20,000 less than the previous month. While job growth is evident - there are more employed persons overall and the unemployment rate is down 1%, employment recovery simply isn’t keeping up with the pace that was set in previous months.
- The hospitality and leisure industry continues to lead in job growth. In the month of October, the industry gained 271,000 jobs. This is more than 40% of the overall number of newly employed people over the last month, and a larger gain than any other single industry. This growth is led by job growth in food services and drinking places, which had 192,000 of the 271,000 job gains.
- Temp agencies are also playing a huge role in job gains. Temporary help services managed to account for 109,000 additional jobs this month, more than half of the job gains in the Professional and business services industry. We’re obviously encouraged to see temp agencies recovering from the impact of the pandemic. It’s a sign of good things to come as more staffing professionals go back to work to help businesses secure the talent they need!
- Millions are still negatively impacted by the pandemic. 3.6 million people reported being prevented from looking for work due to the pandemic in October (down from 4.5 million in September), and 15.1 million reported they were unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic (down from 19.4 million in September). Though the numbers are looking better than in previous months, these still show millions of people suffering financially because of a public health crisis that is completely out of their control.
Check out the infographic below for more of the data:
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