Free online courses for tech skills alone won’t cut it. It will take fresh thinking to get Americans back to work. While the outlook appears bleak, there are some ways a Biden administration can help get America’s job market back on track when Covid ends: According to recent research, only 37% of US jobs can ever be done fully at home. But that’s a life raft unavailable to millions of Americans in lower-skilled roles. The option to work from home has been a saving grace that has protected high-income tech and professional jobs. Scott Applewhite/APĪ divided Congress would be a great thing for investorsĪlready growing for generations, the nation’s economic divide skyrocketed during the pandemic as low-income workers in tourism, food services and retail faced massive layoffs from already low-paying jobs. The Capitol is seen in Washington on the morning after Election Day, Wednesday, Nov. This month, two major mall owners accounting for about 130 retail properties filed for bankruptcy, taking millions of dollars of holiday pay for lower-income Americans in the process. Millions of Americans typically earn extra pay from temporary seasonal jobs starting this month, but Glassdoor analysis shows holiday hiring is down 8% from a year ago. That means retail, entertainment and other industries that rely on travelers and foot traffic are still experiencing double-digit declines in job postings from a year ago. What’s more, Covid-wary consumers are still shifting their spending toward contactless e-commerce shopping. The United States hasn’t locked down en masse for months, but the monthly pace of job gains is still slowing down as Covid-19 cases soar. But as the pandemic continues, any temporary layoffs risk becoming permanent as restaurants and retailers run out of cash and fold. In early summer, jobs cruised back as temporarily laid-off workers were rehired or reentered the workforce. President-elect Joe Biden’s first priority must be to throw an economic lifeline to the workers whose lives have been upended by the pandemic - many with jobs that won’t be returning for years, if ever, in retail, tourism, personal services and entertainment. Even if the promising new Pfizer vaccine announced this week brings the spread of Covid to a halt, the nation’s economy will have a long way to go until it recovers. Any job market recovery is one gained on unstable ground and tethered to a pandemic that can pull back the reins of progress as long as the health crisis remains unresolved. While the economy has already recovered more than half of them, that’s hardly enough to offset the nation’s massive job, income and wealth losses overall.Ĭovid-19 is in the driver’s seat of the economy. The labor market flatlined earlier this year as the pandemic erased 22 million jobs. The nationwide lockdowns put in place to control the spread of Covid-19 in the United States this spring triggered the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. is chief economist and director of research at the jobs site Glassdoor.
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