The retail, restaurant, and hotel industries aren’t the only ones that suffer during a recession. During periods like these, industries like automotive, oil and gas, sports, real estate, and many more face significant decreases. Although the recession brought on by the coronavirus epidemic is unusual, many of these businesses have had difficulties in the past.
However, as we already stated, not all is doom and gloom. Certain industries have done a good job of riding the wave and adapting.
In the Covid 19 Recession, what types of occupations were most likely to be lost?
We can investigate pandemic job losses by various demographic groups by combining five occupation groupings within the leisure and hospitality sector into three groups. Table 3 shows the baseline proportion of employment by gender and race/ethnicity for each occupation group in 2019, as well as the share of job losses within each group for each demographic category. This helps us to better understand the job losses depicted in Figures B and C.
The above-mentioned losses by race/ethnicity and gender are almost certainly a result of occupational segregation, or the greater likelihood that some workers are more likely to be found in specific jobs than others. White men are more likely to work in higher-paying managerial and professional occupations than lower-paying service, sales, and office support occupations, but they experience far less job loss than other workers. White men accounted for around one-third of management and professional jobs in the leisure and hospitality industry, but just one-quarter of employment losses. Black women, Hispanic males, and AAPI employees, on the other hand, incurred disproportionate employment losses in those occupations, despite being less likely to be found in management and professional occupations than other leisure and hospitality occupations.
Who were the hardest hit by the Great Recession?
Rising unemployment, dropping property values, and the stock market decline all had an impact on those approaching retirement, either directly or indirectly. Furthermore, many elderly persons who were not directly impacted by the recession had children or other relatives who were. For many older persons, the recession’s financial difficulties resulted in changes in wealth and spending patterns, as well as physical and mental health issues with long-term effects.
Medical professional
Within the medical field, there are numerous vocations and specialties. This group includes Registered Nurses (RNs), pharmacists, physicians, surgeons, paramedics, dentists, dental assistants, and even veterinarians. People and animals become ill regardless of the economy, thus they will always require the assistance of trained professionals.
Specialized care, therapy, and counseling
Consider elder care, physical therapists, occupational therapy, substance-abuse counseling, chiropractic treatment, home health aides, mental health specialists, social workers, and other professionals who operate in this field. People place a high importance on their health. They will spend money on services that will help them to be productive while also being pain-free. Some of these services are covered by insurance, encouraging consumers to use them even when they are short on cash.
Law enforcement officers
The specific link between crime and economic cycles is difficult to pin down. Some crimes predict a downturn, while others coincide with it, and still others show no link at all. Communities prefer to invest in physical safety for local companies and citizens in any economic scenario, which means that police officers and the professionals who support them are in high demand even during a downturn.
Public utility services
During economic downturns, electric, water, sewage, waste, trash, and recycling services all continue to operate. Utility personnel, after all, are essential to ensuring public order and health. Surprisingly, consultants that serve those utilities appear to get the same benefit. Many cities, for example, are obligated to undertake annual audits of their trash-collection companies. Even in a down economy, consulting businesses that undertake such audits will have work to do.
Financial services
The importance of money mobility explains why financial specialists are always in demand. Accountants, auditors, actuaries, claims adjusters, tax preparers, and insurance underwriters are just a few of the employment available in the financial services industry. Many jobs necessitate professional certificates such as Enrolled Agent (EA), Certified Public Accountant (CPA), or Certified Financial Analyst (CFA) (Chartered Financial Analyst).
Education services
Economic booms come and go, but putting money for the future is always a good idea. Regardless of the economy, jobs in primary education, secondary school, higher education, special education, and adult education are in high demand. Those interested in following this path should be aware that the method education is given is changing. New types of distant and on-demand education are becoming more relevant in addition to traditional classroom educators. As a result, a teaching career might be flexible in terms of both location and delivery manner.
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What types of occupations did the recession eliminate?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) declared in April 2014 that the number of private-sector jobs in the United States has finally recovered to its 2008 peak six long years and an agonizingly slow four-year recovery. According to a 2013 analysis from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), unemployment was only 4.4 percent in October 2006, but had risen to 10% by 2009. It has recently reduced to 6.7 percent, but openings can still be difficult to come by. Many groups have been heavily impacted, ranging from veterans to recent college grads, and job searches for the long-term unemployed can drag on indefinitely.
The US economy is predicted to add 200,000 jobs every year, but those added will not necessarily be the same as those lost six years ago. The labor market in the United States has been significantly recomposed as a result of ongoing technical and economic transformation, including computerization and outsourcing. According to a 2013 study by Duke University and the University of British Columbia, middle-income occupations are rapidly vanishing during recessions.
“The Low-Wage Recovery: Industry Employment and Wages Four Years into the Recovery,” a 2014 analysis of BLS data by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), looks at the types of employment that were lost during the recession and those that have been added since the recovery began. The BLS’s Current Employment Statistics (CES) and Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) surveys provided the source data. The OES provided pay data, which is based on median estimates rather than averages, which can be skewed by higher-paid employment within certain industries.
- While the US economy has recovered to the number of private-sector jobs it had in 2008, the gains and losses have not been evenly distributed: 1 million jobs were lost in high-wage industries, whereas 1.8 million were added in low-wage industries. The effects of the recession vary widely, as indicated in the graph below, but overall, losses were greater in high-wage jobs and growth was stronger in low-wage jobs.
- Lower-wage industries were responsible for 22% of job losses during the recession, but 44% of job gains since the recovery began. During the recession, the lower-wage sector lost 2 million jobs, but has subsequently added 3.8 million.
- Food-service work, which pays the least of the low-paid jobs with a median hourly wage of $9.48, grew the most: While the recession resulted in the loss of 367,000 jobs, 1.2 million have been gained since then. Overall, the sector now employs 9% more people than it did before the recession.
- Health and education are two other low-wage growth industries: “This was the only industry to add jobs during both the downturn and the recovery, bringing employment nearly 13 percent higher than it was at the beginning of the recession.”
- Mid-wage industries accounted for 37% of job losses during the recession, but just 26% of new jobs since then. There are roughly one million fewer such employment presently than there were in 2008. Services provided by local governments were particularly heavily hit, and they have yet to fully recover.
- Higher-wage industries lost 41% of jobs during the recession, but only 30% of new jobs were created. 3.6 million jobs in higher-wage industries including accounting, legal work, and construction were lost during the recession; just 2.6 million jobs have been added since then.
- The high-wage professional, scientific, and technical services industries saw significant job growth through March 2014, adding more than 800,000 jobs occupations like accountants, legal professionals, software developers, and engineers. “While significant job growth in this higher-wage industry is a welcome trend, employment growth is nearly six percentage points lower than it was at a similar stage following the 2001 recession,” says the report.
- While there has been some recovery in construction, manufacturing, transportation, and related occupations, the recession losses were so large that they are only now returning to pre-recession levels construction employment is still 20% below its 2008 peak, for example, and food and textile manufacturing employment is still 11% below its pre-recession peak.
- “Over the last four years, private-sector increases have been somewhat offset by job losses in the public sector as a result of federal, state, and local budget cuts. During the recovery era, net employment losses totaled 627,000 across all levels of government. Education absorbed over three-quarters of the 378,000 net job losses over the last four years, which was particularly severe at the municipal level.”
- The job losses and gains in the 2001 and 2008 recessions were quite different: After the 2001 recession, 39 percent of the gains were in lower-wage industries, 20 percent in mid-wage industries, and 40 percent in higher-wage industries. Growth has been concentrated in low-wage and some mid-wage industries since the 2008 recession, but higher-wage growth has been significantly weaker.
In an interview with the New York Times, the study’s author, Michael Evangelist, said: “Fast food is driving the bulk of the job growth at the bottom end – the job gains there are just phenomenal.” If this is the case if these occupations are here to stay and will account for a significant portion of the economy the issue becomes, “How can we make them better?”
Recession, unemployment, inequality, financial crisis, jobless recovery, outsourcing, and computerization are some of the terms used to describe the situation.
What industries are being impacted by the recession?
Healthcare, food, consumer staples, and basic transportation are examples of generally inelastic industries that can thrive during economic downturns. During a public health emergency, they may also benefit from being classified as critical industries.
Who was the most affected by the pandemic?
COVID-19 caused the greatest number of deaths in Bolivia throughout the fall and winter seasons. COVID-19 claimed the lives of the most people in Bolivia during the early stages of the pandemic in the winter of 2020. The Gamma strain, which was initially discovered in Brazil, fuelled the second-largest increase in the fall and winter of 2021 (May to July 2021). In Peru, the Gamma form was also responsible for the biggest COVID-19 surge, which lasted from January to July 2021. Mask use has remained high in both countries, topping 70%, saving an even greater number of fatalities. In-person social connections (mobility) have been significantly fewer in Peru for longer than in Bolivia, which may explain why the COVID-19 outbreak in Peru has been less.
Which industries have been hit hard by the pandemic?
The epidemic has impacted all industries, although certain firms and sectors have been hit more than others. The risk of infection from various activities, the capacity of firms to function remotely, and virus containment strategies have all played a role. All of this has had an impact on current business and future aspirations.
What does evidence from economic research tell us?
- Firms indicate that their revenues were 21% lower and their investment was 26% lower (on average) from April 2020 to March 2021 than they would have been otherwise.
- Overall uncertainty spiked during the start of the epidemic, but it has started to level down in recent months. Over the previous year, 70% of businesses said that their degree of uncertainty was high or very high.
- The severely damaged industries are those that rely on personal connections or travel. This covers recreational activities like gyms, as well as lodging and food services (pubs, cafes, and restaurants), when sales were more than 50% lower than normal owing to Covid-19 in the previous year.
Why has the impact differed by industry? Some companies’ revenues have been impacted more than others by lockdown laws and social distancing measures (mostly negatively, but positively for some firms). There are significant variances in workers’ abilities to work from home, related to both business type and employee limits for example, workers with children may struggle to work efficiently while also home schooling their children.
Supply chain disruptions (firms’ capacity to obtain the supplies they need to conduct business) will have a greater impact on some enterprises than others. Recent developments, such as post-Brexit teething problems and the Suez Canal’s ‘traffic jam,’ have only aggravated supply chain issues.
Furthermore, organizations differ in their ability to tolerate disruptions owing to cash on hand, as well as in the judgments they make in the face of significant uncertainty about future business conditions.
What do firms themselves say the impact has been?
Many studies inquire about how Covid-19 has impacted businesses and how much they expect it will continue to do so in the future. The Decision Maker Panel (DMP) and surveys performed by corporate organizations such as the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) are the most important surveys in the UK (CBI). In addition, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) launched the new Business Insights and Conditions Survey in reaction to the crisis (BICS). This is an important source of information.
The DMP is a monthly poll of chief financial officers from small, medium, and large businesses in the United Kingdom. Around 3,000 organizations reply each month to the study, which covers a wide spectrum of industries.
In comparison to other business surveys, both the BICS and DMP surveys use large samples that are intended to be representative of UK enterprises. They provide timely, quantitative data that can be dissected to gain a deeper understanding of what lies beyond the headline figures. The BICS and DMP statistics tell a largely comparable story where they cover the same concerns.
Sales declined dramatically, while employment fell by less
Figure 1 shows the DMP survey’s anticipated impact on sales and employment during the first year of the epidemic. Companies across the board reported a significant drop in sales, with recreational services reporting a 60 percent drop. Accommodation and food, administration and support, and transportation and storage were among the other sectors that reported significant reductions.
Other production (agricultural, mining and quarrying, and utilities) and information and communications were projected to have the least consequences, as they are less likely to be affected by lockdowns and other limitations.
The predicted job losses were also significant, although as shown in Figure 3, they were less severe than the sales declines, thanks in part to government assistance programs such as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS).
What impact did Covid have on the economy?
- The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a severe toll on the world economy, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasting a 3.9 percent reduction in global GDP from 2019 to 2020, making it the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. While the global economy is expected to recover in 2021, the recovery has been uneven, and gaps in vaccination access and coverage may jeopardize progress in many parts of the world.
- The White House’s U.S. COVID-19 Global Response and Recovery Framework, among other things, aims to boost the economies of countries that have suffered as a result of the pandemic. This will be particularly crucial in countries where the United States has made significant investments in other areas of health, such as PEPFAR, the United States’ global HIV program. COVID-19’s economic effects on the HIV response could be as important as the direct health effects, and hence could have a considerable impact on US efforts in these nations. We looked at the existing and predicted economic impact of COVID-19 in 53 PEPFAR countries to help influence these efforts.
- In general, we find that GDP dropped in the majority of PEPFAR nations in 2020, the year the pandemic broke out, compared to 2019. The contraction was greater than 10% in 11 countries. While PEPFAR countries saw a lower median GDP decline in 2020 than the world economy (1.9 percent vs. 3.9 percent), they performed worse than their economic and geographic peers.
- While the global economy was expected to revive in 2021, the same could not be said for the PEPFAR countries. While almost all PEPFAR countries are expected to expand their GDP in 2021, the anticipated growth, at least through 2024, is expected to be lower than pre-pandemic estimates (10-13 percent below). Global GDP expectations, on the other hand, are currently higher than pre-pandemic estimates. Furthermore, the global economy’s troubles are likely to persist, particularly in low- and middle-income nations, as the strong bounce seen in 2021 is predicted to slow in 2022.
- Finally, economic recovery in PEPFAR countries faces enormous uncertainty, since it will be heavily dependent on the future course of the COVID-19 epidemic, economic relief measures, and vaccine roll-out. Less than a third of the population in 30 of the 53 PEPFAR nations has gotten at least one vaccination dose, and just 10 are on track to reach global COVID-19 vaccine targets this year.
Introduction
The worldwide economy has taken a huge hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasting a 3.9 percent reduction in global median GDP from 2019 to 2020, the worst downturn since the Great Depression. The global economy was predicted to increase last year, in 2021, as countries began to reopen and vaccines became accessible, though still below pre-pandemic estimates, and recovery has been unequal across countries and regions. Furthermore, the IMF has stated that vaccine access is critical to economic recovery “As some countries return to normalcy, others continue to see new waves of illnesses and growing death rates. Indeed, vaccine coverage in low-income nations lags well behind that of other countries, and many are unlikely to meet global vaccine targets at current rates.
A goal under the White House’s COVID-19 Global Response and Recovery Framework is to “bolster economies and other important systems that are under stress as a result of COVID-19 in order to avoid a reversal and facilitate recovery.” This will be especially crucial in countries where the United States has made significant investments in other areas of health, such as PEPFAR, the United States’ global HIV/AIDS program. Because HIV is an infectious disease with no vaccine or cure, the economic consequences of COVID-19 on the HIV response could be as significant as, if not more so, than the direct health consequences.
COVID-19’s current and predicted economic impact in PEPFAR nations is examined in this brief. We used data from the World Economic Outlook (WEO)1 of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on GDP and GDP growth projections2 for 53 countries3 that were required under PEPFAR to submit a Country Operational Plan (COP/ROP) in FY 2020. 4 To further comprehend the expected economic impact, we compared the IMF’s WEO pre-pandemic and current data predictions. Pre-pandemic projections were collected from the WEO database in October 2019, and current data projections were taken from the WEO database in October 2021. The appendix offers WEO GDP growth data for all 53 PEPFAR nations as of October 2021, as well as the world median aggregate.
Economic Impact of COVID-19 in 2020
Almost all PEPFAR nations saw GDP reductions in 2020, and many performed worse than their economic and regional rivals. Nonetheless, PEPFAR countries as a whole saw a smaller recession in 2020 than the world economy.
- In 2020, 32 of the 53 PEPFAR nations (60 percent) are expected to have seen GDP declines. The contraction was greater than 10% in 11 countries. Three of the top five countries with the highest estimated contractions (Angola, Zambia, and Namibia) were in Sub-Saharan Africa, while the other two (Brazil and Panama) were in the Western Hemisphere. The contractions varied from -0.04% in Nicaragua to -30.90% in Angola (see Figure 1).
- In 2020, 21 PEPFAR nations saw positive GDP growth (see Figure 1), however growth was lower in 11 of these countries than in 2019. (see Appendix 1).
- PEPFAR countries as a group saw less recession in 2020 than the global economy (1.9 percent median decline in PEPFAR countries vs. 3.9 percent overall) (see Figure 1), however they lagged behind their economic and geographical peers (see Figure 2).