Look, we knew this report would be historically bad. It certainly was. We’ve never had a government-mandated stoppage of the US economy which is essentially what happened. To put in perspective what happened last month, we had more jobs lost in April than during the entirety of the Great Recession a decade ago. In the history of the ADP Report, the highest month for job loss previously had been about 835,000 in 2009 during the Great Recession. In April, -20.2 million private-sector jobs.
It’s stunning in its totality though not surprising when weekly claims are considered. If you’re looking for a silver lining in a historically awful report, analysts anticipated the loss would be 22 million jobs. So, at least it wasn’t that bad? The destruction in jobs ran the gambit. There was no industry spared but there were industries hit harder than others. The industries with the worst losses were:
- #1 Leisure and hospitality (8.6 million jobs lost)
- #2 Trade, transportation & Utilities (3.4 million jobs lost)
- #3 Construction (2.5 million jobs lost)
The industries which held up the best were Natural Resources and Mining, Financial Services, and IT.
As for the destruction based on the size of businesses:
- Small businesses: -6 million
- Medium-sized businesses: -5.3 million
- Large businesses: -9 million
Clearly the job destruction of the lockdowns took no prisoners. It’s painful to see, and if you’re a person who is represented in this report your pain is shared by many. The question now is, how many businesses will be able to reopen? It can take years to build a successful business but for the majority, it would taken weeks of this shutdown to destroy them. It’s truly sad, especially since you did nothing wrong and you had no control over this situation. The government report will be out Friday to tie the government jobs piece into this puzzle. For now, it’s about controlling what we can control to make our communities and businesses great again, as soon as it’s possible. In South Florida, we need to rally around our businesses, we're the fourth hardest-hit metro in the country and recovery won’t be quick or easy, but it will be faster if we support each other in the process.
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