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Summary:
The labor market has exhibited solid growth in the past few years, largely due to the strong growth in three industries: Health Care and Social Assistance (HCSA), Leisure and Hospitality (LH), and Government (G). However, while the level of payroll employment surpassed prepandemic levels, a gap of approximately 3.4 million remains between these levels and the level of employment that would have been expected in the absence of the pandemic. Using data on vacancies and vacancy yields, we estimate that HCSA and G are quickly approaching their prepandemic trend trajectories. LH, however, is not on track to catch up anytime soon. These results suggest that growth in the labor market, and support from these key industries, may be slowing but should continue to be solid in the near future.
Key findings:
- Payroll employment levels have surpassed prepandemic levels but remain below the prepandemic expected trend level.
- Health Care and Social Assistance, Leisure and Hospitality, and Government Industries accounted for 75 percentage of growth in the last year.
- Health care and Social Assistance and Government are approaching trend levels of employment, and the outsized growth should slow, while Leisure and Hospitality is not expected to reach trend employment in the near future.
Center Affiliation: Center for Human Capital Studies
JEL classification: E24, J21
Key words: trend employment, industry employment, labor market
https://doi.org/10.29338/ph2024-08
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