Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor Senior Economist joins the On the Move panel to discuss the findings of their August Job Market report.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: I want to turn to something else that is indirectly-- or perhaps even directly-- affecting markets, and that's the job market. To help us understand the latest report from Glassdoor, we bring in Glassdoor senior economist Daniel Zhao, who is joining us from San Francisco, California. And there's a lot in this report that we could digest. But I'm going to-- something that jumped out at me that I think is a positive, if you can help us understand the context of it, is this cities where we're seeing jobs, at least hiring pick up. And that's what surprised me. Because we have the exodus from cities, and yet Chicago and Boston were among the top cities where we saw job openings. How do we interpret that?

DANIEL ZHAO: Well, I think it's interesting to see that some of the cities where growth is the fastest month over month, like Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, those aren't the New Yorks and the San Franciscos where the cost of living is quite as high. But keep in mind that New York and San Francisco, in our data, are still growing month-over-month faster than the national average. And I think this data is actually a bit of a Rorschach test where major cities are down year over year more than the national average, but they are recovering faster now, month over month.

MELODY HAHM: Daniel, but what does the job be posted in a certain city actually mean in this environment? Do you feel like it's actually very democratizing at this point, where someone in Iowa is saying, hey, this is my shot at applying for a job in Chicago? And maybe I won't have to move there. Maybe there won't even be this expectation, especially because the in-person onboarding process is likely not going to happen this year.

DANIEL ZHAO: I think most people still expect that their jobs to be physically located wherever the company is, and that's true for both the employer and the worker. There might be a period of time, whether it's six months to a year, where workers are still remote. But ultimately, I think people expect to go back to the office. And we are seeing that remote job openings-- truly remote job openings-- are increasing. They're up 61% year over year. That's a huge increase, but it's still a very small percentage of the overall labor market.

RICK NEWMAN: Hey Daniel, Rick Newman here. Are we seeing a gap or maybe even a growing gap between manufacturing and the service sector? I mean, the manufacturing sector seems to be recovering, service sector not recovering at the same pace. So what's happening there?

DANIEL ZHAO: Yeah, so I think that you do see that manufacturing is recovering faster. And I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that just companies are more able to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. And manufacturing has gotten a little bit more information and experience with dealing with things. They have more access to PPE, whereas services, depending on the industry, it can be a little bit more difficult, especially when you think about how many services are consumer focused and are just highly reliant on what consumer demand looks like right now. And that's just very volatile, very uncertain in today's environment.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Broader picture here, we heard from the Labor Department that there's an expectation that job growth in the country-- I think it was from 2009 to 2019-- was 1.4%. But then going forward, now to 2029, it's only going to be, like, 0.4%. That's going to have an impact on the things we're talking about. Do you see what they're saying as being accurate, or are you seeing a different trend?

DANIEL ZHAO: I think it's generally accurate. What we probably are going to see over the next decade is a slowdown in job growth, like the BLS has said. But I think it's more interesting to say where the job growth is going to slow down or where it's even going to accelerate. So for example, health care is going to continue to be a huge industry and job creator for many Americans, especially as the population ages. So that's certainly going to be an interesting industry to watch.

MELODY HAHM: And Daniel, of course, we're talking about jobs as though they're all full time, right? At least for the white-collar LinkedIn workforce. But if you do think about especially those in creative industries, they're always in, like, a freelance state of mind, right? Have you seen an uptick during this time of people looking for those side hustles, looking for perhaps that multi-hyphenated title that they can put on their LinkedIn resume?

DANIEL ZHAO: Yeah, absolutely. So there are definitely-- in these uncertain times, people are looking for any opportunity, and they're being really scrappy about starting their own businesses, looking for side hustles. I think it'll be very interesting to see how that trend plays out over the duration of the crisis and then after the crisis to see if that's a trend that will persist. Because I think that's ultimately one of the big question marks surrounding this crisis is what trends are going to stick around and which ones are just temporary.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor senior economist, we appreciate your being here to discuss the Glassdoor report. We look forward to the next one and having you back.