While COVID-19 confirmed cases in the US have approached 1.9 million, we’ve received some promising news from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The June employment news release details that the US saw an increase in 2.5 million jobs in May – lowering the unemployment rate 13.3%.
Here’s a look at unemployment over the last year:
While many news headlines will state that unemployment is significantly higher than previous years, it’s important to note the change over the past few months. We see that in April we peaked at a historical high of 14.7%. In May 2020 we saw a decrease in unemployment (aka. increase in employment) of 1.4%. This 1.4% accounts for 2.5 million jobs.
The following chart shows a look at employment improvements by industry over the last year.
The chart above shows signifiant improvements across nearly all industries with the exception of Mining and Logging which show a minor decrease of nearly 600,000 jobs.
With the current environment employment seems to be changing minute by minute. To put it in perspective, here’s a breakdown over the last two months of employment by industry:
The largest growth we see is in the construction industry as construction across the country begins to ramp up. Business services have also made a significant improvement month-over-month.
We’ll be keeping an eye out next month for further results, however it seems that employment is looking up on all fronts as the general public starts to resume professional services.
For more depth on how COVID-19 is impacting hiring, get our June Employment Update.
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