The Houston region shed a shocking 361,400 jobs in the wake of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last spring. By this summer, roughly 60 percent of that loss had been regained. For the last 18 months, Parker Harvey, principal economist for the Gulf Coast Workforce Board and Workforce Solutions, has been tracking the dynamic ups and downs of the labor market since it began and continued to rebound. What he found is that a year of unprecedented disruption demanded new ways of looking at data and gauging recovery.

Join us and guest Parker Harvey for an exploration of this labor market data and what it means for Houston’s path to recovery. Harvey will discuss how to measure the rebound, business formation throughout the pandemic, distinctions between different unemployed populations, and mapping the return to pre-pandemic total employment.

Speaker:

• Parker Harvey, Principal Economist, Gulf Coast Workforce Board and Workforce Solutions