The USA reopens… and catering jobs are back
Job vacancies increased by a whopping 379,000 in February, including 465,000 in the private sector, double the expected 195,000.
Even more exceptionally of these 379,000 jobs, as many as 355,000, or 93%, were in leisure and hospitality, and within this category the only sector that has had an explosion is the one that most has paid for Covid-19: the employees of the restaurant service and bars, namely waitresses and bartenders, who have grown by as much as 286,000 jobs, equal to 75% of the increases. This completely reverses the decline in December.
To be sure, a rebound in restaurant jobs was to be expected. Recall that in our preview of today's issue we quoted Goldman as saying that "contagion rates have dropped and the severity of restrictions for companies has generally eased" in February, and therefore it appears that the rebound has been much stronger than what Goldman had expected.
Commenting on the rise in leisure jobs, South Bay research writes that “the rise in payrolls at Leisiure & Hospitality reflects the rise in consumer spending in the face of severe winter weather and ongoing COVID restrictions. Let's imagine what will happen when those brakes are released ”.
Really imagine: As Renaissance Macro analyst Neil Dutta said, “With the case of the new COVID cases, employment growth is picking up in the high-end service sectors. As the vaccination campaign progresses, we will see cases continue to come and people go out more. This will lead to a boom in the economy, especially in the service industries. We will see a seven-figure number of jobs at some point in the coming months .. "
Here is the list of all the additional jobs in the various sectors.
In addition to waiters and bartenders, employment also increased in housing (+36,000) and entertainment, gambling and recreation (+33,000) with the reopening of America.
Another notable change: While there were gains in most service sectors, with the main losses concentrated in government (-86,000, led by a drop in local government education (-37,000) and state government education (-32,000) and in construction (-61,000), temporary payrolls continued to rise, adding 53K in February.
As SouthBay notes, as an indicator of private sector job demand, temporary services provide critical information. In particular, temporary staff reflect short-term business and expectations. The trend towards fixed-term hiring decreased in November with the second wave of COVID and the consequent re-imposition of the blockade. It will resume again when the restrictions are lifted in the spring. Another factor to consider is that the pace of recovery was set to slow as maximum employment per sector approached. After dropping by 1 million in March and April, fixed-term hires increased by 823,000.
The US is therefore emerging from the employment crisis. When is Europe?
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The article The USA reopens… and the catering jobs are back comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/gli-usa-riaprono-e-tornano-i-lavori-nella-ristorazione/ on Sat, 06 Mar 2021 08:16:28 +0000.