The US registered ‘unprecedented’ job losses of 20,236,000 between March and April, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report, carried out by the ADP Research Institute. However, given that the data used only provides job loss information up to April 12th, these figures don’t actually reflect the full impact of COVID-19 on the overall unemployment situation, which is predicted to be much worse.
“Job losses of this scale are unprecedented. The total number of job losses for the month of April alone was more than double the total jobs lost during the Great Recession,” stated Ahu Yildirmaz, Co-Head of the ADP Research Institute. “Additionally, it is important to note that the report is based on the total number of payroll records for employees who were active on a company’s payroll through the 12th of the month. This is the same time period the Bureau of Labor and Statistics uses for their survey.”
JOB LOSS BY INDUSTRY
The service industry registered the most unemployment, accounting for 16,007,000 job losses. Around half of the jobs lost in the service industry, belonged to the leisure/hospitality sector (8,607,000), followed by jobs in trade/transportation/utilities sector (3,440,000) and professional/business services (1,167,000)
Approximately 4,229,000 jobs were lost in the manufacturing/goods-producing sector. More than half of these job losses were in the construction industry (2,477,000), followed by manufacturing (1,674,000) and natural resources/mining (78,000).
JOB LOSS BY BUSINESS SIZE
The majority of the layoffs were made by large organisations with over 1,000 employees (7,621,000), followed by medium-sized businesses employing between 50 and 499 employees (5,269,000) and small businesses employing under 19 members of staff (3,361).
The information used to compile the ADP National Employment Report was derived from ADP payroll data, which represents 460,000 US clients employing nearly 26 million workers. The ADP National Employment Report is produced by the ADP Research Institute in collaboration with Moody’s Analytics.
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