The pandemic changed where Americans are likely to live and work, with a growing share of job vacancies moving away from the biggest cities and into smaller metropolitan areas, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Job postings in major central metropolitan areas now account for about 38% of total listings in the country, down from 46% pre-pandemic, the researchers said in a blog post published this week. The percentage of vacancies in smaller metros increased, and the percentage of vacancies in “fringe cities” outside large central cities remained stable, the study showed.
“The largest decreases in job postings by occupation occurred in the largest and densest geographies, and the strongest increases in job postings by occupation occurred in the smaller and less populated geographies,” they said.
There was also a change in the types of jobs advertised. The share of applications for jobs related to computers and mathematics, such as software development, fell to 6.8%, from 10.5%. At the same time, the share of job advertisements in health care rose to 18.6%, from 14.7%.
The researchers looked at job ads from Lightcast, which collects data from company websites, job boards and sites like Indeed. The analysis shows that while there was a full recovery in unemployment after the pandemic pushed millions of people out of work, there were some lasting changes in the composition of the labor force.
Increased telecommuting led to a reduction in the proportion of jobs concentrated in large cities that require people to commute to an office. As people moved, it created more demand for food workers, health care and other services in these areas.
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