Right now, people in the U.S. are both looking for jobs and staying out of the workforce, said Drew Matus, chief market strategist at MetLife Investment Management. Take the hospitality sector, for example, in places that are reopening more. “One would expect that there’s a lot of unemployed people in that sector and as things reopened, they would immediately go back to work,” Matus said. “But it seems like firms are having trouble tempting those people back to work and they’re having to offer higher wages.” Extended unemployment benefits programs are continuing. But people also aren’t returning to work yet because we’re still in the middle of a pandemic and many might not feel comfortable. “Just because things seem to be opening up more doesn’t mean that everyone’s willing to kind of jump back into the economy right away,” Matus said. There are also people with kids in school who haven’t resumed in-person learning yet, and so child care plays a part in this, too.
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