Many people who are out of work are either seeking higher pay than they had before or are still reluctant to take jobs in public-facing service companies for fear of contracting COVID-19. How those two trends balance themselves out will likely set the pace for how many open positions employers can fill in the coming months.
For June, the unemployment rate is projected to have dipped from 5.8 per cent in May to a still-elevated 5.7 per cent. The supply of potential hires is being held back by a variety of factors. Many Americans still have health concerns about working around large numbers of people. About 1.5 million people, mostly women, are no longer working or looking for work because they had to care for children when schools and day care centers shut down. And roughly 2.6 million older workers took advantage of enlarged stock portfolios and home values to retire early.
On Thursday, the government reported that the number of people who applied for jobless aid last week fell to 364,000, the lowest level since the pandemic began. Rising numbers of people quitting jobs, often for higher-paying positions, mean that even employers that have been hiring may be struggling to maintain sufficient staffing levels.
How nice to have the upper hand for once