US labour revival in doubt as Delta variant raises worries

In April, almost a year after she was laid off from her hospitality firm due to the pandemic, Sara Gard was still barely finding her feet with a new full-time job in financial services that she juggled alongside managing her daughter’s remote schooling.

So when her six-year-old daughter’s school, just north of Atlanta, Georgia, that month gave parents the option to choose in-person classes for their children when the new school year started in August, Gard signed up, and felt good about her decision.

Until, that is, a recent surge in cases caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant of Covid-19. Masks in her school district are highly recommended but not enforced and her daughter is too young to be vaccinated. Gard is now having sleepless nights as she reconsiders.

If she decides to put her child back into virtual schooling – which is still on offer – something will have to give. Her husband’s job is at a hospital and Gard’s employer, who she started with last November, wants her to spend more days in the office. “It’s not sustainable for myself or my husband,” Gard, 40, said. “The stress is killing me.”

Expectations for a quickening US economic recovery hinge in large part on more workers in jobs once in-person schooling resumes this fall. But the Delta variant could scupper those expectations if parents, especially women, remain or are forced back on to the sidelines.

“You can imagine school districts deciding to wait a month or two for the Delta wave to quieten. I am not saying it will happen, but it is easy to imagine that. It is also easy to imagine some people might say I am just going to wait a couple of months before going back to work,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday. “If schools don’t open, then caretakers have to stay home and if people don’t go back into the labour force, job growth won’t be so strong.”

Roughly 7 million fewer people are employed in the United States today than before the pandemic, Labour Department surveys of businesses and households show, despite record job openings.