Industries with Highly Volatile Spring Employment
The following industries currently have the highest job volatility in the months of March, April, and May 2020; with “volatility” being measured using an ad hoc statistical metric I put together to assess which industries most wildly fluctuated between negative and positive employment growth over the Spring period.
Some winning losers of this statistical measure of “volatility” are:
1) Offices of Dentists
The rebound of dental offices is more prominent than any other industry measured by the BLS, and may be a historic and real anomaly. Employment dropped 3.5% in March, dropped 54% in April, and then grew 56% in May, compared to the prior month’s employment. Toothaches do not wait for pandemics to end.
2) Scenic and Sightseeing Transportation
It appears that some people are tired of looking out their window for weeks, but not many. This industry appears in the next list, so check it out there.
3) Personal and Laundry Services
In addition to ranking #3 for volatility, this industry ranked #7 on a list of industries with the greatest percentage of employees lost so far.
4) Clothing and Clothing Accessories Stores
In addition to currently ranking #4 in current springtime job volatility, this industry also came in second place in ranking of industries by cumulative percentage drop in employees between March and May 2020. Check it out on the next page.
5) Food Services and Drinking Places
Do you believe that the threat caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is overrated? Talk about it over a drink! It’s a surprise to me this category didn’t drop more in the preliminary data for May 2020; it would be interesting to dig into what geographic regions and states were behind these numbers.
6) Furniture and Home Furnishings Stores
7) Amusements, Gambling, and Recreation
In addition to ranking #7 for preliminary volatility in Spring 2020, this is the Grand Prize winner in the next category. You can check out the graph here.
8) Apparel
This is a relatively small industry compared to its peers, but it encountered major percentage drops in employees and experienced higher than average volatility, by my metric.
9) Sporting Goods, Hobby, Book, and Music Stores
These industries, again, were all notable because they experienced a greater change in percentage employment over the course of Spring than their peers, or experienced a rapid changes in the percentage employment month-to-month. For the most impacted industries though we turn to…
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