America’s labor force is full of signs of strengthening the labor market.
A home builder in Orlando, Florida, is trying to add four construction workers to a team of six people amid rising demand for housing during the pandemic. In Atlanta, a forklift driver charges overtime because the warehouse that employs him is too busy delivering packages. A Chicago-based truck trailer manufacturer is holding more and more drive-through job fairs and increasing wages by up to 7% as hires increase at its nine factories.
Nationally, employment in residential construction, package delivery and storage now exceeds pre-pandemic levels. Manufacturers have steadily increased jobs after slashing payrolls last spring, although employment continues to fall by about 5% from February 2020, according to Department of Labor data. Job vacancies in many blue-collar occupations surpassed pre-virus levels last summer and remain significantly high, according to figures from the online job site Really.
The strength in housing and e-commerce during the pandemic helped boost hiring in blue-collar occupations, which have been hit hard by previous recessions. Many economists and companies expect blue-collar jobs to continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace, after the coronavirus is contained. They anticipate that the main factors driving employer demand for blue collar workers – a rapid increase in online orders and a dynamic housing market – will remain largely, even after vaccines are widely distributed and consumers transfer part of their spending from goods to services.
“The demand for workers is not going to decrease,” said David Berson, chief economist at Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. “We will still need good storage. undefinedWe will continue to see great strength in demand in the construction area, mainly housing. “