More than 66 million U.S. jobs are at 'high risk' of layoffs amid coronavirus, St. Louis Fed finds
As the coronavirus, or COVID-19, wreaks havoc on the U.S. economy, more than 66 million jobs across sales, production, and food preparation services are at “high risk” of layoffs, according to a St. Louis Federal Reserve economist.
Using 2018 occupational data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) detailing 808 occupations, the St. Louis Fed’s Charles Gascon found that 66.8 million people — 46% of working Americans — are employed in these occupations that are at “high risk” of layoffs.
These included people involved in food preparation and serving-related occupations as well as those in sales, production, installation, maintenance, and repair jobs.
Jobs at “low risk” of layoffs were professions essential to public health or safety (such as the police), which comprised of 17% of the total share of employment, those that could work from home (such as a computer programmer), which formed 33%, and those in salaried occupations (such as an elementary school teacher), which constituted 3% of employment.
“There are four things that you need to have be in the lucky bucket: having access to paid leave, having access to health care, having the ability to telework, and decent wages,” Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told Yahoo Finance. “If you have those four things you're lucky — you're a very small minority of the U.S. workforce — that means things are in place for you to be okay. But most of the U.S. workforce does not fit that.”
Sales, restaurant, and events staff are ‘out of luck’
Gascon’s work also showed that the occupations facing the highest risk of unemployment also tended to be lower-paid. The average income for those in high risk occupations was about $36,600. The average earnings of those in the low-risk category is about $64,600 — 75% higher.
Furthermore, 60% of those who can work from home belong to households that earn more than $100,000 a year, according to a separate blog post by the St. Louis Fed. Consequently, as “businesses close their doors or send their workers home, the financial burden of the crisis will likely be felt hardest by lower-income individuals in nonprofessional occupations,” the economists wrote.
According to BLS data, as of May 2019, the occupation held by the most number of workers across the U.S. was “retail salesperson” followed by “fast food and counter worker.” (Other lower wage jobs, particularly health care aides, may see demand rise amid the pandemic.)
In the past, “low middle income workers [have been] hit harder by recessions,” Shierholz explained. “But this is going to be more true than ever before in this recession, because many of the workers who are profoundly affected by the social distancing measures are low wage workers… they’re brick-and-mortar retail staff, they’re restaurant workers, they’re event staff. People aren't doing work in those jobs, and so those are folks who tend to have low wages, lack of health insurance, lack of paid leave, like they're just sort of out of luck.”