Yahoo Finance Labor Secretary: 'There's no playbook on how to come out of a pandemic'
U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh told Yahoo Finance on Friday there's "no question" the Delta variant had an impact on the disappointing August jobs report. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 235,000 in August, far short of the 733,000 expected.
"One of the biggest areas of decline... from the last three job reports was hospitality and leisure, and you can see a correlation to the Delta variant right there," Walsh said.
The leisure and hospitality sector added a net of zero jobs in August — with restaurants and bars losing 42,000 jobs. Retail also lost 29,000 jobs. Walsh told Yahoo Finance if the U.S. continues to see a surge in variants, those sectors highly impacted by health worries and restrictions will continue to be a concern.
"There's kind of a perfect storm brewing here that caused this problem — and we need also the perfect storm to continue to move us out of this," Walsh said. "We're making the investments in places that need to be made and we just need to continue to get people vaccinated...I think we will fully recover. It's just a matter of, we don't know what the timeline is."
The slowdown in job growth comes as enhanced unemployment benefits are set to expire on Sept. 6 — leaving millions of Americans set to lose benefits. The Biden administration has said states can use previous stimulus funds to extend the extra jobless aid after the programs expire, but it doesn't appear any states are likely to do so, as of Friday. Twenty-six have already ended the enhanced benefits early.
When asked what needs to be done to help those unemployed workers amid the Delta variant surge, Walsh said he thinks the restart of schools will help many parents get back to work.
"There's no playbook on how to come out of a pandemic, so we just need to continue to be focused on how do we continue to support our businesses and support our workers to get back into the job market," said Walsh.
The Biden administration is also pushing Congress to send the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a multi-trillion dollar reconciliation package to the president's desk. But a divide between moderates and progressives within the Democratic party threatens the reconciliation package, which will invest trillions in social programs and climate change measures.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) called for a "pause" on the reconciliation legislation in an op-ed this week.
"I personally don't think we should pause. I think we should continue to move forward," Walsh said. "As we think about coming out of the pandemic, as we think about building back better, as we think about winning the future of America — we need to make investments now, not just in building a bridge, but also building a bridge to get people to work."
Jessica Smith is chief political correspondent for Yahoo Finance, based in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter at @JessicaASmith8.
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