America’s blue-collar workers are filled with signs of a strengthening labor market.
A home builder in Orlando, Florida, wants to add four construction workers to a team of six people, amid rising demand for housing during the pandemic. In Atlanta, a forklift catches up with overtime pay because the warehouse that employs him is so busy distributing packages. A Chicago truck manufacturer is increasingly offering propulsion bursaries and increasing wages by up to 7% as rents pick up at its nine production plants.
Nationally, employment in residential construction, parcel delivery and warehousing now exceeds pre-pandemic levels. Manufacturers gradually added their jobs after cutting the spring lower, but the data remains about 5% lower than in February 2020, according to the Department of Labor. Jobs in many occupations with blue-collar workers have been above pre-virus levels this past summer. broken and continues to increase significantly, according to figures from the online workshop.
The strength in housing and e-commerce during the pandemic helped propel the hiring of occupations in blue collars, which was hit hard by previous recessions. Many economists and companies expect the work of blue-collar workers to continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace, once the coronavirus has been curtailed. They predict the key factors that will continue to drive blue-collar workers’ demand – a rapid decline in online orders and a vibrant housing market – will remain largely the same even after vaccines are widely distributed and consumers shift part of their spending from goods to services .
“Demand for workers is not going to go down,” said David Berson, chief economist at Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. ‘We will still need good warehouses. We will continue to see strong demand in the construction sector, especially housing. ”