Nonprofits Lost 50,000 Jobs in December

Nonprofits shed an estimated 50,760 jobs in December, a “striking reversal” of what had been months of slow-but-steady job growth among nonprofits, according to a new report from Johns Hopkins University. As a result, nonprofits employed nearly 930,000 fewer workers in December than they did in February, before the pandemic, a 7.4 percent decline.

Nonprofit employment generally gained ground through the summer and fall. However, with the setback documented in the latest report from Johns Hopkins, it could take nearly 18 months for nonprofits to exceed pre-pandemic employment levels given the overall trend in the past six months. Even that forecast could worsen because of still-surging Covid numbers across the country that could result in more economic disruptions, the report notes.

“The failure of so many of our citizens to adhere to the Covid prevention guidelines has not only contributed to a dramatic rise of Covid cases and deaths in our country, it has also led to a resumption of job losses in the nonprofit sector as in the economy as a whole,” reads the report. “How long this downturn will persist is far from clear at this writing, but continued nonprofit job losses over the next couple of months are not out of the question.”

Arts, entertainment, and recreation nonprofits continue to be the hardest hit. Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, that category of nonprofits has lost 130,360 jobs, or 36.6 percent of roughly 355,965 jobs. Educational services nonprofits have been the second-hardest hit by proportion, but those groups lost the greatest number of jobs among major nonprofit causes, losing 299,930 jobs from February to December, or 15 percent of the roughly 2 million-employee pre-pandemic work force.

The report comes from researchers at Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Society Studies, which, in response to the pandemic has been estimating nonprofit job losses since June. Federal jobs data does not break down nonprofit and for-profit jobs. Hopkins researchers arrive at their estimates by assuming nonprofit job losses were proportional to the share of nonprofit jobs in each industry.