Blue collar jobs boom as Coronavirus spreads demand for housing and e-commerce

America’s blue collar workforce is filled Signs of promoting the labor market.

A homebuilder in Orlando, Florida is seeking to add four construction workers to a team of six in the midst of surging housing demand during the pandemic. In Atlanta, a forklift driver gets paid overtime because the warehouse he works at is too busy distributing packages. The Chicago-based truck trailer manufacturer is increasingly hosting by-car job fairs and is raising wages by up to 7% as hiring increases across its nine plants.

Nationwide, employment in residential construction, parcel delivery and warehousing exceeds pre-pandemic levels. Manufacturers have steadily added their jobs after shrinking pay scales last spring, although employment has continued to fall by about 5% since February 2020, according to Labor Department data. Figures from the online job site showed that vacancies in several blue-collar occupations exceeded pre-virus levels last summer and remained significantly high.

The powerhouse in housing and e-commerce during a pandemic Help drive hiring for blue collar jobsHard hit by previous recessions. Many economists and companies expect blue-collar jobs to continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace, after the coronavirus is contained. They predict that the key factors driving employers to demand blue-collar workers – a rapid recovery in online orders and a booming housing market – will largely remain even after vaccines are widely distributed and consumers divert some of their spending from goods to services.

“The demand for workers is not going to decrease. We still need good storage. Undefined we will continue to see significant strength in demand in construction, especially housing,” said David Pearson, chief economist at Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.