U.S. job market little affected by pandemic, say researchers

By Michael S. DerbyBOSTON (Reuters) - For all the tumult and disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. labor markets have come out on the other side not far from the strong conditions that prevailed before the crisis, a paper presented at a Boston Fed research conference said.Almost all of the hit the U.S. labor market took in 2020, when COVID-19 struck, was tied to temporary layoffs which were swiftly rescinded, said the paper presented on Saturday.Adjusted for these temporary shifts, “the labor market remained surprisingly tight throughout the crisis, despite the dramatic job losses” and by the spring of this year had recovered and returned to extremely tight conditions.“I think if we were going to see large scale changes, we would have seen them by this point,” said Lisa Kahn, an economics professor at the University of Rochester, who was one of the co-authors.The U.S. unemployment rate rode a virtual rollercoaster in 2020. From a 3.5% reading in February of that year, it spiked to 14.7% in April of that year, before undergoing a much faster than expected recovery that has resulted in very low rates of unemployment — it stood at 3.7% last month — and very robust levels of job creation.