The US labour market report for March 2020 shows a staggering loss of 701,000 jobs – one of the biggest monthly losses in history. However, this drop does not reflect the full extent of unemployment in the country, according to the US think tank The Conference Board. It actually reflects “just a fraction of the deterioration in labour market conditions during that month”, it reported.
The March jobs report fails to include developments that took place in the second half of the month, confirmed the think tank. The 10 million people who filed for unemployment benefits in the last two weeks of March were mostly not included in the March unemployment count. “The unemployment rate jumped to 4.4% in March, a first step toward a 15% increase in May,” it added.
KEY STATISTICS
While the report does not fully capture current labour market conditions, it did provide several interesting key statistics. Almost 60% of the entire job loss came from one industry – food services and drinking sectors. “Some industries that were expected to weather the storm are, in fact, likely to shed many jobs due to social distancing,” according to the Conference Board. For example, some 61,000 jobs were lost in the health care and social assistance sector, alone.
The average hourly earnings posted a significant jump too, but for the wrong reasons, noted the think tank. “As was the case in the Great Recession, large layoffs of mostly low paid workers raised the average pay,” it points out. The was an increase, however, in the number of part-time workers for economic reasons. This was due to those preferring full-time jobs, having to settle for a part-time one.
The increase in unemployment rate was also higher for occupations that typically do not require a bachelor’s degree – “the exact opposite of pre-Covid-19 trends”, added The Conference Board.
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