An Examination of the Employment Recovery in the United States in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The “shock” of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic set about wholesale changes across American life, impacting the way we socialized, shopped, and yes, worked. There were significant disruptions across the business landscape in the United States, accompanied by significant job losses, starting in March 2020. In this article, we examine the size and scope of the changes in employment that took place in the U.S. at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and during the recovery period up through April 2021. Utilizing official government data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the author examines how the pandemic caused both widespread job losses and record-setting levels of unemployment but had differential effects across a variety of industries. Then, the author looks at the recovery period, examining the recovery in employment has been unequally distributed across the United States, with differentiations between both urban and rural areas and between metropolitan areas across the county. The article concludes with a look at what this means for the future of work and for management moving forward - hopefully - into the post-pandemic period.