Which industries lost jobs, which gained jobs: Long-term employment trends in charts

New all-time highs: construction, professional and business services, healthcare, wholesale trade. Layoffs hit the information.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Today we talk about the general labor market. But each industry faces its own unique labor market. In some industries, employment has gone from higher to an all-time high, while in other industries, the outlook is darker, usually due to structural changes. So, we’ll look at a decade of employment trends in each major industry, based on today’s employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The industry categories are by workplace. Surveys are sent to employers’ premises. The main activity in that facility determines the industry category. For example, a worker at an Amazon fulfillment center would be under “transportation and storage.” It is not the company that matters, but the work that is done in that specific location.

And we use three-month moving averages (3MMA) to take the drama out of monthly doodles.

construction (all types, from single-family houses to roads).

Total employment: 8.22 million, new all-time high
3MMA Growth: +24,000

Manufacturing: After a big spike in the pandemic, employment has been flat for more than a year but on a slight upward trend, interrupted by a decline during the auto industry strikes in October. The past five months have been in a very narrow range around 12.96 million, the highest since before the Great Recession. Manufacturing continued to be automated, requiring fewer but more skilled workers, including engineers.

Total employment: 12.96 million
3MMA: -2,000

Professional and business services. One of the largest industries by employment, it includes facilities whose employees work primarily in Professional, Scientific and Technical Services; Business and Enterprise Management; Administrative and support services, and waste management and sanitation. It includes facilities from some technology and social media companies.

The skyrocketing employment growth resulting from the pandemic has definitely slowed, but continues at a moderate pace at high employment levels:

Total employment: 22.94 million (record)
3MMA Growth: +4,000

Health care and social care:

Total employment: 22.32 million, new high
3MMA: +88,000

Leisure and hospitality – restaurants, accommodations, resorts, etc.

Total employment: 16.9 million, back to pre-pandemic peak.
3MMA Growth: +28,000

Retail trade counts workers in brick-and-mortar retail stores, such as malls, car dealerships, supermarkets, gas stations, etc., and other commercial locations such as markets. It does not include jobs related to e-commerce operations technology, drivers and warehouse clerks.

Much of this sector has come under severe pressure from e-commerce operations, and dozens of large retailers have been liquidated in recent years in bankruptcy court, with total job losses, which we’ve documented in our Brick-and-Mortar series Meltdown. . Retailers that are doing well are grocers, auto dealers, gas stations, and others that aren’t under the full pressure of e-commerce.

Total employment: 15.7 million
3MMA Growth: +20,000

Wholesale trade:

Total employment: 6.17 million, new all-time high
3MMA: +6,000

Financial activities (finance and insurance plus rental, leasing, purchase, sale and property management). Employment hit record highs as the mortgage industry was decimated after the refinancing boom collapsed amid rising mortgage rates in 2021.

Total employment: 9.23 million
3-MMA growth: 1,000

Transport and storage: Employment rose with the pandemic boom in durable goods, and when it faded as consumers returned to spending on services, employment began to decline. But in recent months, it has started to rise again:

Total employment: 6.58 million
3MMA Growth: +20,000

“Information” includes facilities where people work primarily in web search portals, data processing, data transmission, information services, software publishing, motion picture and sound recording, including broadcasting over the Internet and telecommunications. This includes some tech company job sites and social networks. You can see the effects of the layoffs.

Total employment: 3.01 million
3MMA growth: -2,000

Arts, recreation and leisure includes spectator sports, performing arts, entertainment, gambling, recreation, museums, historic sites, and the like:

Total employment: 2.64 million
3MMA Growth: +8,000

Mining, oil and gas extraction, forestry: Major technological advances have affected employment in this industry, from autonomous mining trucks to equipment and technologies used in fracking and logging.

And over the years, the US has become the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world.

Total employment: 641,000
3MMA Growth: No change

Jobs in federal, state and local governments. About 12.8% of all civil government employees work for the federal government. About 87.2% work for state and local governments, many of them in public education, from elementary schools to universities.

As the economy and the labor market have grown over the past 15 years, public employment has also grown, but at a slower rate than overall employment, so the percentage of public workers among all workers has fallen to a low of several decades of 14.5%. by the end of 2022. Since then, the percentage has increased to 14.7%

So this is total civilian employment at all levels of government:

Total employment: 23.27 million
3MMA Growth: +45,000.

And this is total government employment as a percentage of total nonfarm employment. The big peaks are during the 10-year Census, which in 2020 fell to the pandemic, when overall employment fell, so the percentage of public employment over total non-agricultural employment increased more than normal:

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