Justin Fox, Columnist

Builders and Manufacturers Could Lead This Recovery

For the first time in decades, the goods-producing sectors may drive a strong early-cycle jobs rebound.

September 3, 2020 at 9:43 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

Going up.
Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg

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The bounce-back from the pandemicession is still pretty tentative, and Friday morning’s jobs report may give us a better sense of just how tentative. But construction and manufacturing are already looking strong, writes Conor Sen, raising the possibility that this will be the first recovery in a long, long time to be led by the goods-producing sectors. That’s welcome news because it could mean big job gains even as other parts of the economy continue to be held back by Covid-19.