What kinds of jobs are available now?

Question:

With so many businesses closing because of the Coronavirus, what jobs are available now?

Answer:

More than you probably think.

Healthcare, not surprisingly, is also a hot field these days, as is medical research. If you have those skills, you will be in increasing demand for a long time.

Grocery stores and pharmacies are staffing up, since they are among the few businesses that are still up and running at capacity. Walmart plans to hire 150,000 new workers, mostly temporarily through May, according to USA Today. Some positions will convert to permanent ones when the crisis is over. CVS also announced plans to hire 50,000 new workers to meet community needs around the country.

Food delivery, either to stores or to individual homes, is a quickly-growing field too. Truck drivers, Grubhub and Doordash drivers, Instacart shoppers, pizza and other restaurant delivery folks are in growing demand.

Amazon is hiring 100,000 new workers to deliver all the stuff we can’t get from the mall these days. It’s also planning to raise its minimum pay to $17 per hour, according to USA Today. Technology companies, such as Apple, Google and Netflix, are working to keep their lines of communication open, and to keep all the new telecommuters online, entertained, connected and sane.

Many online businesses are in need of people, especially those that deliver goods and services to people confined and working at home. Zoom, for instance, is a platform that provides virtual meetings.

The 2020 Census is hiring temporary workers. Its website says, “The U.S. Census Bureau continues to accept applications for temporary part-time positions with the 2020 Census. Although many job offers have been made, there is still an opportunity for jobs to be offered.” Going door-to-door is no longer part of the job; neither is traveling far outside your own neighborhood. Check it out at https://2020census.gov/en/jobs.html

Obviously this isn’t the time to take a job that has a lot of face-to-face contact with the public. But there is a surprising number of job openings that substitute for that very contact. Maybe one of them is for you, at least in the short term.