See which Fresno County jobs have bounced back after two years of COVID-19 pandemic
It’s taken about two years, but the number of jobs across the entire economy in Fresno County has finally recovered to levels that preceded the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The state Employment Development Department estimated that 420,600 people were employed across the county’s various industry sectors in February 2022. That’s 900 more workers than in February 2020, the last full month before the first local cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the central San Joaquin Valley.
At that pre-pandemic point, about 419,700 employees were at work in jobs in Fresno County. In March 2020, employment began to dip as stay-at-home orders and business closures intended to slow the spread of COVID-19 took hold, and by April’s job estimates, more than 52,000 local workers had been idled.
Leisure and hospitality businesses, including restaurants, hotels and entertainment places, were particularly hard hit by the business restrictions. So were retail stores and administrative business or office support as thousands of people transitioned to working from home.
Some sectors, however, have seen more robust rebounds than others, and some have yet to climb back to where they were before the pandemic.
The leisure/hospitality sector, which is subject to seasonal cycles even in the best of years, had about 31,600 workers in February 2020. Within two months that sector lost more than 13,000 employees – almost 38% of its workforce.
As of February 2022, the latest data available from the EDD, the sector remained 1,000 workers short of where it was two years earlier.
Retail stores employed almost 38,000 people in Fresno County before the pandemic, but lost almost 17% of their workers as many merchants confronted initial closures in March and April 2020 as they were deemed “non-essential” businesses. Those businesses were also subject to later capacity restrictions to accommodate social distancing.
Retail jobs bounced back for the 2020 and 2021 holiday seasons before seasonal lulls, and by February 2022 total jobs exceeded pre-pandemic levels by about 1,900 workers.
The state data does not, however, offer any differentiation or detail about the numbers of part-time or full-time jobs.
Administrative/support services, a sprawling sector that includes office administrators, facilities support, employment services, travel services, security, custodial and other building services — is a sector that continues to lag well behind where it was two years ago.
Prior to the pandemic, in February 2020, about 19,800 people worked in those kinds of jobs, the state estimated. After losing about 4,700 jobs, diving to just over 15,000 workers in April 2020, the industry’s rebound remains sluggish, down about 3,000 positions compared before COVID-19 struck.
