Labor Department economist sees job gains in pandemic-hit industries, also worker ‘hesitancy’
Industries hardest hit by the pandemic, including leisure and hospitality, showed job gains last month, but workers in those areas that require face-to-face interactions are still showing pandemic “hesitancy” when it comes to employment, the Labor Department’s chief economist said.
The economy overall added 943,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate dropped by half a percentage point to 5.4%, according to a stronger-than-anticipated jobs report released Friday.
“I think there’s still some hesitancy about the virus. I think people are still trying to figure out how, when they’ll go back to work, when they’re going to be ready,” said Janelle Jones, chief economist at the Labor Department, in an interview with McClatchy.
Industries that were hit hard by the pandemic are showing job gains. “Leisure and hospitality, local education, government, those are seeing some gains,” she said.
In sectors with “a lot of face-to-face contact, where there still is a chance of high transmission, is where we’re still seeing … some hesitancy,” Jones said.
The economy still has “only filled 75% of the jobs that we lost” in the pandemic, she said.
“We are moving in the right direction. No one’s claiming victory. No one’s really taking a victory lap yet,” she said. But the economy is moving out of the “massive hole” it was in at the beginning of last year.
She credited vaccines with that improvement, noting that half of all Americans are now vaccinated. “A way to have a healthy economy is to have a healthy public.”
President Joe Biden in remarks on the jobs report linked the nation’s economic progress to his administration’s efforts to defeat the virus through vaccinations.
“Economic growth is the fastest in 40 years. Jobs are up. The unemployment rate is the lowest since the pandemic hit. Black unemployment is down as well,” Biden said. “Why? Because we put in place the necessary tools early in my presidency— the COVID vaccine — the COVID-19 vaccine plan, the American Rescue Plan — to fight the virus and fight the economic mess we inherited.”
One area that economists are keeping an eye on in the coming months is the effect of the expiration of pandemic-related unemployment insurance at the beginning of September.
“We’ve seen some states have cut off benefits already. And I think right now, the evidence is that it really hasn’t had that much of an effect either way,” Jones said.
But she said she would be keeping an eye on the state-level data. “I think that will give us more clarity,” she said. “If we see that workers need more help, we’ll figure out how to help them.”
BLACK AND HISPANIC WORKERS SEE UNEMPLOYMENT DROP
A bright spot in the monthly report was lower unemployment for Black and Hispanic men and women.
Black women had an unemployment rate in July of 7.6% — nearly a full percentage point lower than the previous month — and Hispanic women had an unemployment rate of 6.7%, which was down from 7.9% in June.
Unemployment fell for Black men to 8.4% in July from 10% a month earlier, and for Hispanic men to 6.2% from 6.6%
The 8.2% unemployment rate for African Americans was higher than the national average and the 4.9% jobless rate for white men in July, and 4.5% for white women.
“Something we are committed to is an inclusive recovery,” Jones said. “Those are crisis level unemployment rates for those communities and for those workers. And so I think we want to make sure that that continues to fall, like it did last month.”
More than 2 million people have been out of work for more than a year. “We know it’s going to take time for those workers to feel the effects of an economic recovery, and so we just want to make sure that that number comes down before we actually do declare the job is done,” Jones said of long-term unemployment.
The administration says it is striving for workers of color to have unemployment levels as low as other demographic groups have experienced in the past.
“It’s been a long, persistent structural inequality in the labor market,” Jones said. “This administration is committed to supporting workers, supporting communities for as long as it takes to actually have a recovery.”
