Sharp Rise in Job Postings Stipulating Vaccine Requirements: Report

A man walks past vaccine infromation in Grand Central Terminal in New York City on July 27, 2021. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The number of job openings posted on the Indeed hiring platform stipulating COVID-19 vaccines as a condition of employment has risen sharply in recent weeks, including popping up in sectors with little interpersonal contact, according to the company’s research arm.

The share of job postings per million explicitly mentioning COVID-19 vaccine requirements rose 34 percent in the week ending Aug. 7, compared to the same period a month earlier, according to an analytical note by AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, the research and insights division of the Indeed job site.

In line with the same trend, the share of job postings broadly requiring vaccines but not specifically mentioning COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP virus, surged by an over-the-month 90 percent.

“Employers are well aware that COVID-19, the fear of it and restrictions against it, dampen economic activity and some are not only encouraging vaccination among employees, but are now requiring it,” Konkel wrote.

Vaccination requirements are emerging in sectors that in the past didn’t typically require employees to be inoculated, such as software development and marketing, according to the note. For example, the share of software development postings requiring vaccinations rose by more than 10,000 percent between February and July of this year—to 437.9 job postings per million from 3.5 job postings per million.

“It’s a similar story for other sectors like accounting, retail, and marketing that don’t normally require vaccination but are now starting to,” Konkel wrote.

While the percent change numbers look daunting, Konkel noted that job postings requiring vaccines are still “a small fraction” of overall listings.

The findings follow reports of major companies—including Disney, Facebook, Google, McDonald’s, Twitter, United Airlines, and Walmart—announcing COVID-19 vaccine mandates for staff.

The Biden administration has been pushing hard for more Americans to get the shot, with President Joe Biden recently imposing strict requirements on federal employees to either be vaccinated or comply with new rules on mandatory masking, weekly testing, social distancing, and more. Biden said he hoped businesses would follow suit with measures that would boost vaccination rates among employees.

Jeff Zients, White House COVID-⁠19 response coordinator, said at an Aug. 12 briefing that, for the first time since mid-June, the country is averaging around a half-million people getting newly vaccinated each day.

“We all know that vaccinations are the very best line of defense against COVID and how we end this pandemic,” Zients said. “That is why we’ve been tireless in our efforts to get more and more Americans vaccinated.”

Jeff Zients, the White House's COVID-19 response czar, speaks during a press briefing at the White House on April 13, 2021. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

He noted that a number of institutions, including state and local governments, health care systems, businesses, universities, and other institutions “are also stepping up.”

Across the country, nearly 700 colleges and universities have announced vaccination requirements, while over 200 health systems have done the same, he said.

In what could be a further boost to the administration’s vaccination drive, White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said he hoped the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would soon grant full approval to the COVID-19 vaccines, which are now authorized for emergency use only, paving the way for what he said would be “a flood” of vaccine mandates at businesses and schools nationwide.

“Organizations, enterprises, universities, colleges that have been reluctant to mandate at the local level will feel much more confident,” Fauci told USA Today in an interview. “They can say, ‘If you want to come to this college or this university, you’ve got to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this plant, you have to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this enterprise, you’ve got to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this hospital, you’ve got to get vaccinated.'”

Vaccine mandates have become a hot-button issue, with advocates welcoming them as a measure to help stem the spread of the CCP virus and protect vulnerable populations, while opponents object on a range of grounds, including that the vaccines are currently under emergency use authorization, that mandates infringe on personal liberties, as well as concerns about side effects.