Hiring rebounds in Memphis
New report shows jobs in the Greater Memphis area have returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Thousands of Greater Memphis residents found work in November, driving the jobless rate down and marking a return to normal employment levels after the pandemic set off heavy layoffs in April.
A new report from federal labor market analysts shows 621,200 residents of metropolitan Memphis held paying jobs in November, a number that suggests almost everyone idled in the spring was back to work by November.
The pandemic hit at a time Memphis was rolling. A year ago, employment in Greater Memphis crested at the highest level ever reported here — a record 622,983 residents were working in November 2019. Now the most recent report on the job market shows the region is almost back to that record level.
It suggests a remarkable recovery. Once the pandemic settled in, governors and mayors ordered non-essential businesses closed to ward off the contagious coronavirus. Thousands of still-employed people resorted to work from home and limited travel. Layoffs surged. Between March and April, 101,000 metro-area residents lost work. By late April, only 520,488 people were employed, a lowly level last experienced here in 1994.
With the economy mired, and suggestions it could take a decade for Memphis to recover all the lost jobs, closed businesses were allowed to reopen in early summer, but travelers held back. Hotels, bars, restaurants, stores and museums were all but crippled. Factory employment fell too.
By July, the jobless rate reached 13.1% here, the highest level since the 1930s’ Great Depression. Slowly in mid summer, as closed businesses reopened and the stay-at-home labor force put on the extraordinary effort of trying to maintain regular business, the economy picked up. Employers began hiring again, first in small numbers, then a torrent. In November, 27,000 metro-area residents found work.
This latest report, released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows the November unemployment rate in the metro area dropped to 6.7% from 9.6% in October.
The jobless rate would have fallen further except thousands of idled people flooded into the labor force looking for work amid reports the logistics industry in particular needed more workers. By late November, the metro area labor force numbered 665,684 people, the highest level ever recorded here in any month in any year by the federal labor market analysts.
A year earlier, when employment levels set a record and the jobless rate dipped to 3.9%, the labor force numbered 648,047. The labor force is the total number of unemployed people actively looking for jobs as well as those who are employed.
Among the nine counties that make up 1.3-million population metro Memphis, the improved job market was apparent in Shelby County, the largest county in Tennessee with 937,000 residents and home to Memphis proper.
Shelby County’s jobless rate fell to 7% in November from 11% in October. The rate stood at 3.7% in November 2019 and crested last July at 14.8%, according to reports maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
In suburban Desoto County, the third most populous county in Mississippi with 180,000 residents, November’s jobless measured 4.3%, compared to 5.1% in October. Desoto’s rate peaked in April at 11.4%. The rate is virtually even with last year — 4.2% in November 2019.
Labor market analysts figure out the unemployment rate using a household survey that also measures the number of residents who say they are working in the metro area. The household survey differs from a separate survey of employers that asks for the number of workers getting paychecks.
In metro Memphis, the employer survey, also released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows payroll jobs increased. But the level of job growth is not as dramatic as in the household survey. BLS analysts provide the data but do not try to reconcile differences in the two reports.
It is thought that the large number of part-time jobs in the metro area accounts for much of the difference. Thousands of residents work two or more jobs and many of them work for cash and apparently some may not be counted in the employer survey.
In November, the employer survey showed 638,000 part-time and fulltime payroll jobs, a gain of 3,100 jobs in one month following job gains of 11,000 in October, 5,000 in September and 10,000 in August.
By November, metro Memphis remained 28,000 jobs shy of the record set a year earlier, when 666,000 jobs were reported filled in November 2019.
Just before the pandemic set in, the employer survey showed 654,200 jobs in March. Greater Memphis remains 16,200 jobs below that mark.
Ted Evanoff, business columnist of The Commercial Appeal, can be reached at evanoff@commercial appeal.com and (901) 529-2292.