“There are jobs that people decided wouldn’t be affected by coronavirus because they could be done remotely, but those jobs are dependent on people paying for those services”
A dental hygienist speaking with a patient in Colorado. Photo: Jason Connolly/AFP via Getty Images One observation that didn’t make it into my Friday story on the bad-and-getting-worse employment picture is that job losses due to the coronavirus crisis are going to hit industries you don’t expect.
You saw this even in the extremely partial information in Friday’s jobs report, which reflected the employment situation as of the week ending Saturday, March 14, well before the worst of the closures had hit. That report showed 43,000 fewer health-care jobs in mid-March than in mid-February. Hospital employment was almost precisely flat between the two months, but dental offices reported 17,000 fewer workers and doctors’ offices had 12,000 fewer.
You can see this kind of variation in harder-hit sectors, too: The March jobs report showed moderate job losses at clothing retailers and furniture retailers, while general-merchandise retailers added 10,000 jobs. The job-loss trends likely got much more extreme through March: Macy’s, for example, announced it was closing all its stores on March 17, too late for the job losses at Macy’s to be reflected in the March jobs report.
All that job loss across the economy, even in sectors where you may not have known to look for it, means less spending power in households and at businesses. And that may mean less business even for enterprises that can adjust to the stay-at-home orders and keep doing business.
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