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EMPLOYMENT & UNEMPLOYMENT • Apr 2022 • Volume 11 / Number 4
Retail trade is one of the largest and most closely followed industries in the U.S. economy. Retailers enable producers to sell their merchandise to consumers, and their activities are closely tied to broader trends in consumer confidence and spending measures. During the COVID-19 pandemic, retail trade experienced sharp declines in employment and output as many retailers and consumers began to engage in contactless shopping and curbside pickup.
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Before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many IT jobs were already projected to be in high demand over the next decade. The pandemic has made IT workers even more important to the future economy, and the jobs projections for these occupations have increased.
Every 10 years, the U.S. Census Bureau conducts a full count of the entire population of the United States, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution. To achieve this mission, the Census Bureau hires hundreds of thousands of temporary workers. These workers are reflected in the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey employment estimates.
In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered job loss in the labor market on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. A year later, the economic situation had improved. Approximately 60 percent of jobs lost had returned, but employment was still down compared to pre-pandemic levels. In an effort to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic affected labor market experience, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) fielded a short supplemental survey to gather information from its sample members on work and working conditions, among other topics.