There aren’t enough jobs for America’s unemployed

The number of unemployed Americans vastly outnumbers the number of open jobs in every single state.

Why it matters: Even though we’ve come back from the worst unemployment numbers, the pandemic’s economic toll keeps turning furloughs into job losses — and pushing millions of people out of the workforce entirely.

By the numbers: In every state, job postings are way down compared with 2019 levels, according to data from Indeed’s Hiring Lab that was provided to Axios.

• In several states with job-magnet cities — like New York, California, Illinois and Massachusetts — postings are down close to 30%. “This is more a big-city recession than a rural one,” says Jed Kolko, Indeed’s chief economist.
• Some places, like West Virginia, Mississippi and Alabama, recovered but have started to dip again.
• The outliers: The outlook in Hawaii and D.C., both of which rely on domestic and international tourism, is especially bleak, with job posts down 46% and 40%, respectively.

The big picture: With the pandemic affecting every city and every industry, job seekers have nowhere to turn.

• “Historically, the U.S. has relied on mobility to solve these problems,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “The problem with the pandemic is that it has hit every single community in the country. There’s nowhere to go.”
• Hiring slumps have been concentrated in industries like hospitality and retail, which have been directly hit by the coronavirus crisis. But the effects are bleeding into other sectors like tech and finance as the pandemic and the recession push companies to reevaluate their hiring plans.

The bottom line: “We’re gonna have a lot fewer jobs for a long time,” Zandi says. “We’ll get back, but it won’t be next year or the year after. It’ll likely be mid-decade.”