The Job Market Has Shifted, Should You? – Part 1

As we enter into another month of living and working in the world of Covid-19, we’re bringing you concrete tools and data around how you should consider moving forward, career-wise, as the global economy is shifting, from Katy Piotrowski, M.Ed., LPC, Licensed Professional Career Counselor (LPC) and Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW).

Close to 40 million workers have been affected by economic downturns resulting from Covid-19. For this 3-part blog series, we’re first going to cover data on sectors that are expanding and shrinking so we can help you with your planning. We’ll also talk about how change personally affects you and some strategies for how to respond to change effectively based on what I’ve seen work for thousands of clients. Lastly we’ll share some practical and conservative ways to explore if a career change is right for you, because one of the biggest hurdles is getting past the fear factor, and avoiding reacting to something that ultimately won’t work for you.

Let’s start with some current market data. Things are shifting so fast. As of June 2020 the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released a list of professions that have experienced the largest job losses. We won’t list them all here, but frontline hospitality workers have been some of the industries hardest hit, with almost 50% of people having been laid off, let go, or furloughed. Hotels, sports venues, home furnishings – which was a question mark for me, because why would home furnishings be impacted given that many of us are home more than they have ever been? I believe this boils down to disposable income and not having money to invest in upgrades to your home. Also affected are restaurants and bars, motions pictures, dental offices, personal services. As well as clothing stores, casinos, and scenic transportation like Amtrak.

Some industries have taken a dive but others are on the uptick. At the top of that list are E-commerce retailers. We don’t have the data in any particular order but for instance my daughter works for a web development company, and when the pandemic hit, her employer’s business took a huge step up in business. What many companies are doing – like my daughter’s – is becoming more online retail-friendly.

Also on this list of industries on the uptick are industrial real estate companies. Industrial manufacturing functions have been off-shored for the last couple of decades and now more of that is coming back onto home soil. Companies are looking for industrial spaces to be able to execute their services. This is different from commercial real estate, which I anticipate will take a big hit, in that before the pandemic approximately 5% of employees worked remotely and now between 30 and 40% are working remotely and that should hold moving forward, they predict.

More industries that are holding their own and growing:

• Robotics – more and more activities can be executed without human interaction.
• Virtual meetings, like Zoom.
• Online groceries – last mile distribution, freezer and cooler supply chains.
• E-learning – being able to acquire skills, do our jobs on a platform, from our homes.
• Dark kitchens – kitchens producing food without guest service; delivery instead.

This is some of the data we’ve gathered so you can stay current with what’s happening in the world of work at this time. Next post we’ll be talking about how these changes personally affect you and give you some strategies on how to respond to the changes effectively.