ZipRecruiter Labor Economist Julia Pollack joins Yahoo Finance's On The Move panel to discuss which sectors are facing the most job losses as the coronavirus outbreak escalates.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: We are joined now by the labor economist at ZipRecruiter, Julia Pollack, to talk about where we are seeing job losses. Also joining us is Alexis Keenan. And Alexis, I know you've been covering this, so I'm going to throw to you to ask this first question.

ALEXIS KEENAN: Hi, Julia. Thanks so much for being with us. I wanted to talk to you about some of ZipRecruiter's data showing that really steep slide in the number of small business starts that started to happen just after the last recession in 2008. And small businesses, according to your data, just never recovered from that.

Looking at one of your tables, it shows that just 12 years out from 2007, that starts for these new small businesses in the US at fourth quarter 2019 down to about 115,000 starts. That's just half of what there were in 2007 at 230,000. So I want to hear from you about whether the coronavirus impact will really compound this problem.

JULIA POLLACK: Yes. One, it'll compound that problem. And two, because there were so few small business starts, because the labor market is so dominated by large players, we could see larger job losses than we would otherwise see, because large companies tend to lay off more workers in a recession than smaller companies do.

Small companies are lean. They really don't have much fat to trim. But large companies can often lay off hundreds, sometimes thousands of workers at a time during a recession.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Where do we see some of these job losses? I mean, obviously, we know the airlines, tourism, right, Julia?

JULIA POLLACK: Yes. You know, but really, what I find quite alarming is that we're seeing declines in almost every industry. The only major industry that showed an increase in job postings was the non-profit sector over the past four weeks. Of course, if you drill down and look by job category or by job title, there are areas where there is growth.

Some there's-- in some areas, there's explosive growth. So for example, with e-commerce jobs. Typically on a regular day, there are about 3,000, 4,000 e-commerce-related jobs open. At the moment, there are more than 12,000. And they are just growing very, very quickly as existing stores and restaurants pivot and try to sell their goods online and forge partnerships with delivery drivers.

There's another area where we're seeing a huge increase in delivery driving jobs and in warehousing positions. So you know, even in the worst kind of crisis, there are always companies hiring, and companies are innovating and trying to find ways to keep their factories humming, their stores producing, and revenue rolling in.

JULIE HYMAN: Julia, this is Julie here. Can you give us a little bit more granularity about large companies versus small companies? At a typical time, do you know the breakdown of who's listing on your site between large and small, what that looks like right now, and how much it's changed?

JULIA POLLACK: Yes, we do. We ask employers how many employees they have. I actually have a chart right in front of me. And among the smallest companies that have between one and five workers, job postings are only down 2%, whereas among larger companies with 500 to 3,500 employees, job postings are down 11%, 12% over the past four weeks-- oh, actually, that's over the past week.

So we're seeing a huge decline, and it's happening very rapidly, particularly among large companies, whereas small companies are pretty reluctant to pull down their job postings. Chances are if they were looking for someone they still need that person. So there are still jobs, and job seekers shouldn't completely despair.

There are areas where employers are hiring. I mean, just in the last week, more than 100,000 jobs were added to ZipRecruiter. And many of those say, hiring immediately, desperate for candidates. So there are opportunities out there. But yes, this will be a tough time for workers and for businesses, for sure.

ALEXIS KEENAN: Julia, this is Alexis again. I wanted to ask you about the reports that we're seeing with Walmart, Amazon, CVS hiring hundreds of thousands of workers right now, also Instacart. Instacart saying that they are going to be hiring 300,000 more employees. That will more than double their current workforce. Do you think that this time around that things could be a little bit different with those large companies coming in to pad employment temporarily until workers can go back to their regular jobs?

JULIA POLLACK: Right, so, you know, those companies are really an exception, though, among large companies. We're seeing declines in many other areas. But that is definitely one bright spot. Many companies-- for many companies, this is a breakout moment, right?

Consumers are being forced to switch to online shopping, online entertainment, online learning, and working from home. And there are companies that stand to benefit from that and that can expand their market share. Once you download that delivery app and you become used to hiring your-- buying your groceries through Instacart, that habit might stick. And so this is a great opportunity for companies, and many companies are seizing that opportunity.

Another very encouraging story is how many large companies are pivoting to producing the goods that are needed to solve this health crisis. So GE, Tesla, General Motors, Ford, they're all pivoting their production facilities to-- to produce medical equipment, like ventilators. Razer, a video game company, is producing surgical masks. So there are some companies that, you know, instead of sitting by as revenue falls to zero and closing their stores, are maintaining their productivity and using their capacity in a different way so that they don't need to lay off workers.

ADAM SHAPIRO: All right, Julia Pollack is joining us from ZipRecruiter. We appreciate your being here on Yahoo Finance.