- [Emma] Here's a bird's eye view
of the monumental shifts happening
across the American workforce right now.
The lines above zero show the sectors
that saw the strongest job growth,
since right before the pandemic.
While the lines below show the ones
that have seen the biggest declines.
It's evidence of a larger phenomenon
that is touching almost every industry.
- Business is closing their doors,
employees working crazy hours.
It's all because of the so-called Great Resignation.
- [Emma] In August,
more than 4 million workers quit their jobs,
a record 20-year high.
- A lot of people are taking time to reevaluate
what they want to do with their lives
and what work actually means to them.
- [Emma] For millions of workers and businesses,
the Great Resignation is a period
that could define the future of American labor.
This is how we got to this point
and what we know about where the workers are going.
The first thing to know is that this chart
is showing just a slice of the labor force
between February, 2020 and September, 2021,
from the Labor Department's September jobs report.
There are hundreds of other industries
that have seen growth and declines
during this period as well.
Some that didn't have data available for September.
But what the numbers suggest is clear,
thousands of workers lost their jobs in certain sectors,
and many aren't returning.
Let's go back to spring 2020 when the pandemic took hold.
- Weekly unemployment claims had a stunning new high today
with 6.6 million Americans filing just last week.
- [Emma] As the pandemic spread,
businesses shuttered their doors and tens of millions
of people lost their jobs.
To help workers and businesses stay afloat,
the federal government began handing out relief payments.
And if we look widely at the labor data,
it's clear that certain industries lost more workers
and had a harder time gaining them back than others.
Employment in motion picture
and sound recording industries is still 23% lower
than it was in February, 2020.
And other sectors hit hardest
by the pandemic have been travel and hospitality.
It's clear if you look at this line,
employment and travel arrangement and reservation services
is still almost 25% below February, 2020 levels.
The biggest decline among job sectors in September data.
- The weaker job growth
in travel related sectors is probably a reflection
of both companies inability to find workers
but also weaker demand for travel related services,
especially as the pandemic continued during the summer.
- [Emma] Sarah Chaney Cambon has been reporting
on the Great Resignation and American labor shortage
for the Wall Street Journal.
She pointed out that transit
and ground passenger transportation jobs
also saw a huge hit, losing over 18%.
One part of this sector
that has been impacted heavily is ride sharing,
which has experienced a nationwide shortage of drivers.
And while some have slowly returned
as government relief has ended,
many of these workers are staying off the roads.
For workers with demanding, lower paying jobs,
the pandemic relief payments
may have made them less motivated to return.
And another concern weighing heavily
on many has been the risk of getting COVID.
Between mid June and early October,
the number of people who said they couldn't work
because they were sick with or caring for someone
with COVID rose by 2 million.
Also during this time,
some older workers chose to reassess their priorities.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimates
that 2 1/2 million people retired during the pandemic,
about twice as many as in 2019.
And that approximately 1.5 million of these workers
would not have retired if the pandemic had not happened.
- So a lot of baby boomers have retired early
during the pandemic in part because of concerns about COVID.
Others have seen, really, big gains from the stock market
or housing prices going up a ton
and so they're in a comfortable financial situation.
- [Emma] But many of the workers
who are leaving jobs aren't leaving the workforce entirely.
- A lot of people are quitting their jobs,
maybe because they've experienced burnout
during the pandemic, or they're just looking
for different opportunities.
- [Emma] And an increasing number
of these workers are switching jobs.
- If you're seeing workers switch from one industry
to another it's oftentimes because they can get better pay
or better working conditions in the industry
that they're transitioning to.
- [Emma] Some employers are offering higher wages
and healthcare benefits to try and attract new workers.
And the US economy added about 3 million jobs
from April through September this year.
Though, employment was still down over 3% compared
with the month before the pandemic hit.
Still, many of these workers have started jobs in industries
that have benefited from pandemic driven shifts.
- E-commerce is really taken off
and that's created a lot of jobs at warehouses,
at manufacturers and shipping and postal companies.
And we see that very clearly in the job data.
- [Emma] Couriers and messenger jobs saw
more than an 18% increase,
the largest of any sector in the September data.
While the warehousing and storage field saw
over an 11% rise.
- Some industries were doing really well
before the pandemic started
and the pandemic only helps them,
anything related to science and research
and development was growing pretty strongly
before the pandemic started
and then, after you had demand for vaccines
and so that definitely creates a lot of jobs.
- [Emma] You can see it here.
Scientific research and development service jobs grew
by almost 10%.
COVID cases have declined since the September jobs report.
And some economists are optimistic
that more workers will return this fall.
Still, others are concerned
that labor shortages reflect longer-term shifts away
from the workforce that won't reverse.
Meaning, some of these industries could be faced
with long lasting changes.