Job Market Feeling Corona Concerns

With news of the COVID-19 outbreak moving at a breakneck pace, we wanted to provide a view of what our job data tells us so far.

Overall, hiring is down significantly at 2.3% since the end of February. This timing aligns with the February 27th announcement that the White House had escalated its response to the outbreak, placing Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the administration’s coronavirus strategy. In examining data from the same date range in previous years, it does not appear seasonality is a factor in this downward trend.

Hiring by MSA

We also took a closer look at hiring in corona-impacted cities. As expected, we are seeing decreases in hiring for Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in California, Washington, and New York. Several of these MSAs were on an upward trend in early 2020, but dropped sharply as known COVID-19 cases in the area increased.

Hiring by Industry

Looking at the time period of 2/27/20 – 3/7/20, we can clearly see the employers hit hardest by the outbreak. Unsurprisingly, travel and tourism top the list. Hotel hiring has seeing the biggest declines with 30.7% less job listings since 2/27/20, followed by Cruise industry hiring down 10.1%, and the Airline industry down 8.3%. The employers in those respective industries with the biggest declines are Hilton Worldwide, Carnival Cruise Lines, and United Airlines.

Corona-specific job listings

Job listings specific to the coronavirus first began to appear in our database in February, and continue to increase steadily. Here are just a few of the current openings:

• The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is seeking a Program Officer and an Associate Strategy Officer to join their COVID-19 response team.
• DLH Holdings Corporation has several openings for Health Communications Professionals.
• State and local governments are looking for fill positions including Planners, Epidemiologists, Health Communications and Response, Public Health Nurses and Community Educators.
• Novavax is looking to fill positions related to vaccine development.

We will continue to monitor the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the job market in the weeks and months to come.

Interested in the data behind this post? Contact us to learn more about LinkUp jobs data.