One Year of the COVID Economy

This resource provides data on job losses and unemployment rates one year into the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers have broken them down by the following factors: 1) household income, 2) occupations and industries, 3) gender, 4) race/ethnicity, and 5) education level. This information is further documented in another research resource that graphically represents the three tools used to identify the factors above. (https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/jobtracker) These three tools are: 1) Overall Job Loss and Unemployment, 2) Unemployment by Group, and 3) Job Loss by Group.

(This blog post takes seven minutes to read.)

The researchers identified the following findings:

• Household Income: Adults from lower-income households were more likely to experience loss of employment income during the pandemic than those from higher-income households. Between March 13, 2020 and early February 2021, 56 percent of adults from households with incomes below $25,000 experienced a loss of employment income, compared to 29 percent of adults from households with incomes of $200,000 or above during the same period.
• Occupations and Industries: The spread of COVID-19 has devastated occupations and industries that rely on in-person interaction. While some workplaces were able to transition their employees and customers to a virtual format, others faced closures or were unable to continue normal operations amid widespread social distancing and stay-at-home orders. As a result, workers in occupations that rely on face-to-face contact were more likely to experience job losses overall. The fields with the highest shares of job losses from March 2020 to February 2021 were food preparation and serving (20 percent of all jobs lost); education, legal, community service, arts, and media (14 percent of all jobs lost); and personal care and service occupations (13 percent of all jobs lost).
• Gender: The recession has inordinately affected women in the workforce. Women were more likely to work in jobs deeply impacted during the initial downturn, and, in spring 2020, they were four times more likely than men to report that they were not working in order to provide childcare. More than 2.3 million women have left the labor force since February 2020, compared to about 1.8 million men.
• Race and Ethnicity: The recession has had disparate effects on employment across racial and ethnic groups. The initial recession hit Latino workers particularly hard. By February 2021, Black workers had experienced the largest percent change in employment since March 2020, with 930,000 Black workers losing jobs.
• Education Level: Workers with lower levels of education were more likely to experience job losses, especially in the early months of the recession. Overall, from March 2020 to February 2021, those with some college or associate degrees experienced exceptionally high rates of job losses relative to their share of employment. By contrast, workers with bachelor’s degrees or higher were more insulated from job losses, as they were during the Great Recession of 2008.

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2021
• Author(s): Carnavale, A.
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies