The American blue-collar workforce is full of signs of a strengthened labor market.
A home builder in Orlando, Florida, is trying to add four construction workers to a team of six, amid rising demand for housing during the pandemic. In Atlanta, a forklift driver earns overtime pay because the warehouse that hires him is so busy distributing parcels. A Chicago truck trailer manufacturer is hosting more and more job fairs and is raising wages by up to 7% as employment rises in its nine factories.
At the national level, employment in residential construction, package delivery and storage now exceeds pre-pandemic levels. Manufacturers have steadily added jobs after falling wages last spring, although employment remains down about 5% from February 2020, according to the Department of Labor. Job vacancies in many blue-collar jobs exceeded pre-virus levels last summer and remain significantly high, according to figures from the online job site Indeed.
Power in housing and e-commerce during the pandemic helped drive employment in blue-collar occupations, which were severely affected 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 predict the key factors driving employers’ demand for blue-collar workers – a rapid takeover of online orders and a thriving real estate market – will remain largely even after vaccines are widely distributed and consumers transfer some of their spending. from goods to services.
“Demand for workers will not go down,” said David Berson, chief economist at Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. “We will still need good deposits. undefinedWe will continue to see a strong demand in the construction area, especially housing. ”