W e all witnessed how the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) halted the global economy in a largely unprecedented manner. Yet, while many economic sectors were put on pause, others continued operating throughout the pandemic. These sectors were classified as ‘essential’ industries, and consequently were operated by workers who were also classified as essential. Who are these essential workers, and what jobs do they hold in our community? They range from grocery store clerks and healthcare workers who continued reporting to their places of work, to teachers who continued delivering education in a remote environment. In this segment of our West Michigan Dataconomy blog series, we will examine essential workers in West Michigan and the impact COVID-19 has had on the labor market. Michigan’s total employment is roughly 4,300,000 and, according to our analysis of EMSI’s data, about 2,400,000 of those – roughly 55% of all occupations – are considered essential. In West Michigan we estimate total employment in 2019 to be 807,000 , and about 464,000 of those occupations would be classif ied as essential. Our share of essential workers is slightly higher than the rest of the state, coming in at 58% . The breakdown of essential workers by county is shown in Figure 1 . If we look further into the data by sectors that were considered essential (Figure 2) , it comes at no surprise to f ind that Healthcare/Public Health ( 18.3% ) and Food and Agriculture ( 10.8% ) had the highest concentration of essential workers. However, it is important to note that despite those sectors containing the highest concentration of essential workers, there were still thousands of people in the Water andWastewater sector going towork every day. Water and Wastewater only accounted for 1.3% , yet that still accounted for 10,000 people working throughout the pandemic to ensure essential amenities of modern civilization were maintained.
ESSENTIAL WORKERS BY COUNTY
Figure 1
2019 ESSENTIAL WORKER JOBS
PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL WM JOBS
COUNTY
Allegan Barry Ionia Kent Lake Mason
27,517 8,456 13,820
3.4% 1.0% 1.7%
249,254
30.9% 0.1% 0.9% 1.0% 1.3% 4.7% 1.0% 0.6% 0.6% 10.2%
1,099 6,928 7,910 10,862 37,745 8,113 5,163 4,926 81,931
Mecosta Montcalm Muskegon Newaygo
Oceana Osceola Ottawa
Total
463,724
57.5%
2019 ESSENTIAL WORKER JOBS/ PERCENTAGE
Figure 2
OF TOTAL WM JOBS
18.3%
NON- ESSENTIAL JOBS
10.8%
HEALTHCARE/ PUBLIC HEALTH (147,909) FOOD AND AGRICULTURE (87,107) ENERGY (59,684) PUBLIC WORKS (53,609) TRANSPORTATION AND LOGISTICS (45,148) LAW ENFORCEMENT, PUBLIC SAFETY, FIRST RESPONDERS (31,115) OTHER COMMUNITY-BASED GOVT. OPERATIONS 5.6% 3.6% 3.9% 1.3%
7.4%
6.6%
AND ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS (28,978) WATER AND WASTEWATER (10,174)
9
DATACONOMY: ESSENTIAL WORKERS
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter