Last Updated on February 23, 2023
The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the U.S. employment landscape. However, unlike past recessions, the Covid-19 recession hit unevenly. Many businesses were shuttered due to lockdowns, resulting in record job losses, yet employers of computer-related or professional service workers continued to seek out foreign workers due to a lack of domestic talent supply.
In its latest report, commissioned and co-authored by Envoy Global, New American Economy explores this situation in greater detail.
Key Findings Include:
- Despite the economic upheaval of the pandemic, there remains a shortage of highly skilled workers to meet the persistent demand of employers.
- Demand for computer-related workers is stable, and even growing. In fact, computer-related jobs made up 69.6% of all foreign labor requests in FY2020, a slight increase from FY2019 despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Demand for computer-related occupations is growing and outpacing supply. In 2019, the unemployment rate for computer- and mathematics-related occupations was 2.3%. By 2020 that had only increased by 0.7 percentage points, to 3.0%. By March 2021, their unemployment rate was 1.9%, lower than it was before the pandemic.
- Employers' ability to fill these roles will be critical to America's longer-term economic recovery. If businesses cannot find enough workers to fill technical and specialized roles that are often critical to their continued growth and innovation, U.S. companies may be hamstrung in their capacity to expand and operate efficiently.
Download a copy and dig into the data.
