Job recovery is arriving much faster for workers in America’s highest earning industries
19 November 2020
Reproduced from the Leuthold Group; Note: Subdivides the total U.S. unemployment rate between four sectors with the lowest average hourly earnings and the remaining nine sectors; Chart: Axios Visuals
Job recovery is arriving much faster for workers in America’s highest earning industries.
Why it matters: The bottom earning industries are nowhere near recovered — right as the economy faces another test from the pandemic.
- Meanwhile, high earning industries have an unemployment rate that’s approaching normal.
Flashback: The unemployment rate in the highest and lowest earning industries was within a tight range, 3% and 3.5%, respectively, according to investment research firm the Leuthold Group. (Bottom earning sectors have historically seen slightly higher rates of unemployment.)
- Then the gap exploded when COVID-19 forced the initial wave of widespread lockdowns in the spring.
- High earning sectors’ unemployment rate rose to 12%. But it was nearly twice as bad for the lowest earning industries, with unemployment peaking at 23%.
Details: Industries like retail, leisure and hospitality, agriculture and nondurable goods are the bottom earning industries.
- Top earning industries include finance, durable goods, and professional and business services.
Between the lines: The unemployment rate among the low earning sectors remains 6 percentage points above its pre-pandemic level.
- Recovery is in reach for the high earning industries, with unemployment just 2.5 percentage points higher than pre-crisis levels.
Where it stands: More than half of currently unemployed Americans worked in the bottom earning industries, even though they represent only 24% of the workforce.
What they're saying: With soaring COVID-19 cases leading to restrictions across most of the country, analysts expect the lowest income industries to once again take a bigger hit to employment.
- "Similar to the summer’s second wave, high-earner, mostly anti-social industries (three-quarters of employment and a higher proportion of total income and spending) will likely again prove largely impervious,” Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group, wrote in a research note on Wednesday.
- This could explain why the U.S. might not see as big an economic drag as the coronavirus rages across the country.
- Top earning workers “quickly and decisively entered a new [economic] expansion — even though 55% of the unemployed still struggle with extremely challenging conditions,” says Paulsen.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.