CWIA recently released the April County Profile for Lancaster County. The unemployment rate has stayed stagnant, at 5.3%, almost 2 full percentage points lower than the state avg. of 7.4%. Labor Force participation experienced it’s second month of decline, after a slight growth in February 2021. However, there are still more than 5,000 less people in the workforce than compared to April 2019, pre-pandemic levels. As we continue to recover from the height of job loss in April of 2020, when over 41,000 local residents filed for unemployment, workers in the Leisure and Hospitality industry are experiencing the highest rate of UC Exhaustion between the time frame of May 2020 to April 2021, at 25% of all claims. Will those workers return to the same industry, return to work at all, or explore new opportunities?
