Tech industry layoffs have been grabbing headlines for months now, but in retail, hospitality, manufacturing, healthcare, and other sectors that rely on large numbers of frontline workers, employers are facing the opposite problem—a severe and ongoing labor crunch. Companies in these industries are still struggling to recoup jobs lost during the pandemic and are finding they can’t hire fast enough to meet rebounding demand. In the leisure and hospitality sector, for example, employers added 128,000 jobs in January, followed by another 105,000 in February. That same month, the number of information-related jobs fell by 25,000.

The difference in employment trends between the tech industry, which relies mostly on salaried desk workers, and industries that employ tens of millions of hourly frontline workers reflects a new, post-pandemic reality.

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