The U.S. job market is expected to keep improving over the next 12 months, but it won’t be as booming as it was before the coronavirus pandemic began, according to the nation’s top economists.
Experts polled for Bankrate’s Third-Quarter Economic Indicator survey see joblessness sinking to 4.23 percent a year from now. That compares with the 3.5 percent unemployment rate that prevailed before the pandemic, a 50-year low.
Meanwhile, economists forecast that U.S. employers will add an average of 340,000 new positions each month over the next 12 months. If that comes to fruition, it means the job market will add roughly 4.1 million new jobs over the course of the year, welcomed improvement after the coronavirus pandemic cratered 22.2 million positions.
“If those conditions materialize, along with further progress with vaccinations and the pandemic, many Americans should see some benefit to their own household bottom line with respect to their personal finances,” says Mark Hamrick, Bankrate senior economic analyst and Washington bureau chief.
At the same time, however, the labor market would still be nearly 1.3 million positions short from those pre-outbreak levels.
This article is the first in a four-part series analyzing findings from Bankrate’s Third-Quarter Economic Indicator poll. We asked experts where they see the job market, unemployment, the Federal Reserve, the 10-year Treasury yield and inflation heading over the next 12 months. We also polled experts on the balance of risks facing the U.S. economy and what’s currently keeping them up at night.
What’s holding the U.S. labor market back
Economists’ forecasts that the labor market will still bear pandemic-born scars 12 months from now seemingly contradicts firms’ growing complaints of labor shortages.
Job openings in July soared to a record 10.9 million and outnumber the 8.4 million unemployed Americans, according to data from the Department of Labor.
Yet, experts in Bankrate’s poll indicate that ongoing disruptions from the pandemic are to blame for the tepid rebound. The coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the labor market, first for its large-scale shutdown of the gears of modern commerce that kept consumers hunkered down at home and nonessential businesses shuttered — and now for its disruptions to the worker supply, who have been kept on the sidelines largely thanks to child care concerns, virus fears and other COVID-related issues.
Experts also pointed to the Delta variant as chilling the recovery, with new virus cases keeping jittery consumers at home and restrictions holding back consumption, particularly among positions in the leisure and hospitality sector.
“Labor demand isn’t the problem, as there are more than 10 million open positions,” says Ryan Sweet, senior director at Moody’s Analytics, who sees the economy adding 405,000 new positions each month on average and the unemployment rate falling to 3.4 percent. “There is a labor supply issue, and we assumed the new school year would help boost the supply of labor. Though this will likely occur, it may take a little longer than we previously anticipated because of the Delta variant. Hurricane Ida may also weigh on job growth in September.”
Notably, every respondent in Bankrate’s poll sees the unemployment rate falling and the labor market growing, suggesting that continued improvement is in the cards. Yet, some experts expect a faster pace of improvement than others.
“The economy is moving to an era of so-called ‘stagflation,’ which features higher inflation, higher unemployment rate, lower GDP [gross domestic product] or no to minimal economic growth — all undesirable economic outcomes,” says Tenpao Lee, professor emeritus at Niagara University, who sees unemployment dropping slightly to 4.8 percent a year from now and the labor market adding a modest 100,000 new positions on average each month.
Findings from Bankrate’s poll weren’t far off from Federal Reserve officials’ expectations, who see unemployment falling to 4.8 percent at the end of 2021 and 3.8 percent by the end of 2022, according to their most recent projections.
