Uncovering March Industry Trends and Looking Ahead

March jobs increased by 916,000, which is a 0.6% improvement over prior month. The last 3-month average in job growth is approximately 539,000, which included some bumps along the way. The unemployment rate declined from 6.2% to 6.0%, which is down considerably from the recent high in April 2020, but it is 2.5 percentage points higher than its pre-pandemic level in February 2020. The number of unemployed Americans slightly decreased to 9.7 million.

The leisure and hospitality (+280,000), goods-producing (+183,000), and manufacturing (+53,000) industries showed the strongest growth. These increases are likely due to a combination of reasons including increased e-commerce demands as well as the warmer weather and vaccine distribution encouraging travel, but good producing is the most noteworthy increase by +20,253 month-over-month.

According to a recent article from Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), US nonfarm private employment surged in March with the US adding 517,000 jobs compared to the previous month, according to the ADP National Employment Report released today. It follows gains of 176,00 in February and 196,000 in January.

“We saw marked improvement in March’s labor market data, reporting the strongest gain since September 2020,” said Nela Richardson, Chief Economist at ADP.

“Job growth in the service sector significantly outpaced its recent monthly average, led with a notable increase by the leisure and hospitality industry,” Richardson said. “This sector has the most opportunity to improve as the economy continues to gradually reopen and the vaccine is made more widely available.”

The Spring Season is Among Us, Vaccinations Continue, and Extended Stimulus is Here

As we continue into the new year with a new administration in office and the pandemic still on the rise, we are keeping an eye on trends within the healthcare industry including vaccination as well as continued testing.

Additionally, with continued stimulus assistance updates, market demand is hitting record highs and workforce talent is becoming harder to find. For more information on the recent stimulus updates, be sure to check out this recent blog.

In a recent article by The New York Times, Amy Glaser, Senior Vice President at Adecco added to the unemployment conversation noting that in recent weeks, a growing share of her clients had been looking for permanent employees, or converting temporary hires into permanent ones.

“Our conversations have really shifted even over the last six weeks,” she said. “We spent the last year doing a lot of worst-case-scenario planning with our clients, and now the conversation is the opposite — how do we capture the rebound to make the most effective use of it?”

Not to mention that the future of work is still up in the air, with many jobs continuing to be remote. According to another recent article by SIA, IBM is among tech companies planning continued remote work even after the pandemic; CEO Arvind Krishna told Blomberg that 80% of the company’s employees may stay in hybrid roles indefinitely, Business Insider reported. Hybrid roles would involve going to the office at least part of the time for three days per week and remote work the rest. Another 10% to 20% of employees could potentially stay fully remote, but Krishna said he was concerned about their career trajectories.

Additionally, mass sites for vaccinations are continuing to expand across the nation, with each state varying in rules and regulations for vaccine distribution. In fact, this is the biggest vaccination campaign in history, according to Bloomberg. Vaccinations in the U.S. began on December 14, 2020, with healthcare workers and so far, millions of shots have been given. For live updates on these statistics, be sure to check out Bloomberg’s live tracker as well as the CDC website.

At Adecco, we’ve been leading the trend in supporting contact tracing programs for multiple lines of businesses. Overall, we have processed 20.5 million+ COVID specimens, placed 1,800+ contact tracers, and have supported several state-wide programs. Learn more about specific programs here on our website.

As we look ahead into 2021, Adecco has the knowledge and resources needed to fill your hiring needs in all of these industries. Learn more about how we can help your organization with our top-talent network.