US job posting drops 30% on Indeed amid COVID-19 pandemic

Employer demand for workers has gone down significantly in the US amid the COVID-19 pandemic, especially from the second half of March, says a new report which found that the trend in listings on the job site Indeed was over 30 %lower as of April 10 this year than in 2019.

The slowdown in employer demand for workers becomes more apparent upon analysis of new postings that have been on Indeed for a week or less.

The trend in new postings is down 49.1 per cent compared to 2019 as of April 10, Jed Kolko, Chief Economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said in a blog post on Tuesday.

The trend in new postings is more volatile than the overall level of postings, and could rise even as the overall level continues to fall, he said.

The research from Indeed revealed that the trend in US job postings has slowed more among occupations most directly affected by the coronavirus such as hospitality and tourism positions, where the trend in those postings is 62.9 per cent lower than last year.

"Companies such as Amazon may be announcing large hiring plans, but loading and stocking job postings are slowing. These postings are growing 34.9 per cent slower than at the same point last year," Kolko said.

E-commerce giant Amazon filled 100,000 jobs announced in March and the company is planning to hire 75,000 more in order to meet rising demand due to COVID-19 restrictions.

"Postings are down even in sectors not directly impacted by the coronavirus and where many jobs likely could be done from home. Software development postings are growing 25.9 per cent below last year's trend while the trend in banking and finance postings is down 35.8 per cent from 2019," he said.

Strikingly, the trend for both nursing and pharmacy job postings are also negative.

"The trend in nursing postings is down 23.7 per cent compared to last year while pharmacy postings are growing 15.3 per cent slower," Kolko said.

To measure the trends in job postings, the researchers calculated the seven-day moving average of the number of US job postings on Indeed.

According to a recent survey released by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), the US economy is already in a recession and will remain in contraction for the first half of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The survey of 45 economists, conducted April 3-7, showed that the US unemployment rate is expected to spike to 12 per cent in the second quarter, with a loss of 4.58 million jobs on average for the monthly nonfarm payroll employment. But the unemployment rate is expected to fall back to 9.5 per cent at the end of 2020.