by Felix Richter, Oct 10, 2022
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the U.S. economy with full force in March 2020, causing stock markets and economic indicators to plummet and erasing nearly 20 million jobs in a matter of weeks, many had hoped that this crisis would go away as quickly as it had arrived. And while most sectors have now recovered the jobs lost in spring of 2020, there are still some gaps in the recovery, as the following chart shows.
The leisure and hospitality sector in particular is still more than 1.1 million jobs short of its February 2020 level, with the public sector also lagging behind in the jobs recovery.
While these numbers could be interpreted as continued weakness in the affected industries, they are to a large extent the result of employers’ difficulty to fill open positions. According to the latest JOLTS report, there were 1.4 million job openings in leisure and hospitality in August, with 1.2 million unfilled positions in accommodation and food services alone. The same is true for government jobs, of which 1.02 million remained unfilled in August.
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