With COVID-19 cases on the rise yet again, many are now re-assessing the market situation, and the potential for recovery, in amongst the devastating human impacts of the pandemic.

It seemed, for a brief time, that we may be on the way to getting things back on track, but the latest case numbers reiterate the threat that COVID-19 still poses, and underline the fact that we will be dealing with this for some months yet.

What will that mean for our future, for jobs, and for the economy more broadly? This week, LinkedIn has launched a new US Recovery Tracker tool which measures various COVID-19 impacts, and provides insights into how each is changing over time.

As explained by LinkedIn:

“[The Recovery Tracker] will tap into labor market data that’s unique to LinkedIn’s ecosystem, with 690 million members worldwide and more than 160 million members in the United States. Key areas of LinkedIn data include member hiring, job postings and worker confidence.”

As you can see in the above results, the Tracker will highlight key trends in several areas.

And the initial data is not great:

“As shown in the chart above, the U.S. labor market hasn’t meaningfully improved since mid-April, when more than 16 million people filed initial jobless claims in a three-week span. Three of the five LinkedIn data signals are color-coded dark red, which represents the worst showing. The other two are coded orange, which also signals below baseline performance, though to a less severe extent.”

In some ways, it may be better to not look at the numbers – but they can also be beneficial in getting an understanding of these key market elements, and how they relate to your business.

You can subscribe to the LinkedIn ‘Workforce Insights’ newsletter to stay up to date with the new US Recovery Tracker – which, hopefully, will start to look a lot more blue in the coming months.