If you want them to come, you better build it.
For businesses that got hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis and that are hoping to ride the wave of demand that will come as the crisis recedes, building back their workforces will be key. After all, a restaurant without enough cooks can’t serve as many customers and a hotel without enough staff can’t fill as many rooms.
Signs are emerging that the building-back process has begun. The Labor Department on Tuesday said that as of the last day of February there were a seasonally adjusted 7.4 million job openings in the U.S., up from 7.1 million a month earlier and the most since January 2019.
Industries that have done well during the pandemic such as warehousing have already been on hiring sprees. What was notable about Tuesday’s report, however, was the gains in job openings it showed at businesses that were most damaged by the pandemic. Job openings in the food services and accommodation sector rose to 761,000 in February from 657,000 in January. Openings in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector rose to 137,000 from 81,000.
That echoes the job gains registered in last week’s big jobs report—a snapshot of what the labor market looked like as of mid-March—which showed significant employment gains at restaurants and the like. And with far more people getting vaccinated against the novel coronavirus each day than even just a few weeks ago, moves to hire in preparation for reopening could get even more pitched. Available jobs on job-search site Indeed were up 16.4% on April 2 from their level on Feb. 1 last year.
