Labor Markets
Unemployment Insurance (UI) is ending for gig workers, the self-employed and others not in traditional employer/employee relationships. The pandemic UI supplements of $300 a week are ending. The federal moratorium on evictions has ended. The housing and mortgage hardship funds have for the most part not been distributed to their intended beneficiaries -- the landlords and their tenants facing eviction.
The economic recovery has been faster and stronger than was predicted. There is now a mismatch in the labor markets; there are 10 million job openings and 8.5 million unemployed. The openings are in sectors such as education, health care, business and professional services, leisure and hospitality: in disproportionate numbers to those laid off. In other words, the laid off workers are not trained, educated or experienced in those sectors where the new job openings are to be found.
Wages are starting to increase for the lowest paid workers, which is an especially good development. A large number of older workers have given up and retired. Substantial numbers of health care workers are burnt out by the pandemic and have just quit. Schools and day care centers cannot hire enough staff to meet the demand. Some parents are deciding to stay home and care for their children and/or find new careers with a better work/life balance. Some are starting new businesses to fulfill lifetime ambitions or to meet the needs of a changing economy.
The recovery has been geographically uneven. Tourism dependent states like Hawaii, Alaska, Nevada, and New York still have high unemployment rates. By comparison in states like Utah and Idaho, unemployment is at all-time lows. The states which terminated UI benefits early are in no better or worse condition that those who have waited ‘til they expired early this month.
Many of the new job openings are in suburban communities which do not have public transportation accessible or housing affordable to the unemployed living in the cities. In short we are at a time of big transitions in the US labor market; we have an economy recovering well but impaired by the rise of the highly infectious delta variants of Covid 19 and the attitudes of those still vaccine resistant and getting infected and hospitalized at high rates, thus slowing the nation’s return to normal living patterns and renewed economic stability.