The pandemic shuffled Vermont’s top 10 jobs list
Last year, managers held the No. 1 occupation in Vermont, with retail salespersons a close second. Managers’ place at the top was a yet-unexplained surprise; the category has fallen low on the top 10 list in recent years. Notably missing from the 2021 list were waitstaff and food preparation workers, which pre-pandemic were Nos. 5 and 7, respectively. Over 57,000 Vermonters—20 percent of all workers, excluding the self-employed—were employed in the top 10 occupations.
Six of the 10 most common occupations in 2021 had a median wage over $15 an hour. Managers and nurses, the top earners, made more than double this amount, at over $36 an hour. Salespeople and cashiers earned less than $15 an hour.
THIS MONTH
Vermont had 300,800 jobs in April 2022, 15,000 fewer than in January 2020, before the pandemic. Health care, retail, and hospitality, the hardest hit industries at the start of the pandemic, accounted for more than half the losses, or about 8,200 jobs in total.
