The Friday afternoon labor market chart:
Why aren't people working?
Health reasons are high but dropping.
Temporary business slowdowns also dropping.
Retirements are up.
Caregiving hasn't budged.
More details follow ...
1/
Health reasons include being sick with coronavirus symptoms, worried about getting or spreading the virus, and sick/disabled for other reasons.
This peaked in the December/January virus wave and has thankfully come down ... and hopefully will continue to.
2/
Temporary business slowdowns include employer reductions in business, furloughs, or employer temporarily closed.
These, too, are dropping as more businesses reopen and ramp up.
3/
Caregiving includes caring for children, elders, or people w/ coronavirus symptoms. Most responses were about caregiving for children not in school/daycare. This remains stubbornly high.
Even as health reasons and temporary closures have dropped, caregiving burdens persist.
4/
Retirements are up. Both the level and increase are primarily among age 55-64.
The share of 55-64 year olds who are not working because they retired rose from 12% in August 2020 to 16% in March 2021.
Places that gained movers in the pandemic were, those that gained pre-pandemic. New York and the Bay Area stand out for losing more people in the pandemic than the year before.
The metros people moved to in 2020 (relative to 2019) were smaller vacation and resort areas, especially in NY State and New England. The top three metros where in-migration increased are all striking distance from New York City.
Job postings on @indeed are 11% below last year's trend. Very slight improvement vs week ago (-11.5% vs -11.6%). Gains have slowed, especially relative to summer rebound.
Food prep and childcare job postings have slowed in the past couple of weeks as the virus spreads. But loading & stocking jobs are well above last year's trend.
The 2020 vote was very similar to 2016 -- and slightly LESS polarized.
Correlation of county vote margin between 2016 and 2020 was 0.99 (not a typo). And Trump-voting counties in 2016 swung more to Biden than Clinton-voting counties in 2016 did.
Places with brighter future economic prospects swung toward Biden. Higher college attainment, higher median household income, faster projected job growth, and fewer routine jobs were all correlated with a bigger Democratic margin in 2020 than 2016.
Places with better economic outcomes swung toward Biden in 2020. Faster job growth and lower unemployment pre-pandemic -- as well as pandemic-era milder job losses and smaller unemployment increases -- went hand-in-hand with bigger Democratic margins.