3 charts show how Delta has flattened hiring at hotels, restaurants, and retail stores

• These three charts take a look at the employment situation as the economy recovers.
• Leisure and hospitality didn't gain any jobs after several months of consecutive growth.
• The Delta variant may have slowed the pace of recovery, according to Indeed's Nick Bunker.

Restaurants and hotels, which have made up a lot of the job gains over the summer, saw no employment growth in August. Retail also saw another month of jobs losses, mainly in food and beverage stores.

That's just part of the latest jobs report, which wasn't at all what economists were expecting. The US added 235,000 payrolls added last in August, far below the median estimate of 733,000.

"Delta seems to be the overwhelming factor affecting the labor market right now," Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at Glassdoor, told Insider's Juliana Kaplan. Full employment recovery could take even longer if the US continues to add jobs at this pace.

Nick Bunker, economic research director at Indeed, agrees with Zhao.

"That the parts of the economy that are still devastated by the pandemic aren't going to be able to sustainably heal until the pandemic is fully under control," Bunker told Insider.

Restaurants and hotels took a big hit during the first wave of the pandemic and have slowly been regaining jobs. In fact, with the exception of January, leisure and hospitality has been adding jobs each month this year, as seen in the following chart. But after months of consecutive growth, restaurants and hotels saw no employment change in August.

"It has been a source of a lot of the job gains, and to see a zero number is not a good sign for the short-term prospects, especially if we don't see a reversal in the pandemic in the short-term," Bunker said.

Retail trade was 1.8% below pre-pandemic levels in August after the latest employment report. The industry lost 28,500 jobs last month, losing 23,200 jobs in food and beverage stores.

Many industries did see some growth last month, in particular professional and business services led the way.

"Outside of some of these really constrained sectors, there's clearly momentum in the labor market," Bunker said.

The following chart shows the change in employment from July 2021 to August 2021 by industry:

Transportation and warehousing had the second-largest job gains last month. Not only was it a strong month for this industry but as Bunker pointed out, transportation and warehousing is now right above pre-pandemic levels.

"Employment is still growing there," Bunker said about this industry. "And that this is an indication of, perhaps the short term, there's still some attachment to online shopping or getting goods delivered to the home, but we'll have to see how that shakes out in the months ahead to see if this is something more enduring."

We can take a closer look at the industries, like food and beverage stores, to see just how far below they are from employment recovery.

The following chart shows percent change in employment from February 2020 to August 2021. The chart also includes each industry's median hourly wage as of May 2020 from BLS's National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates program.

Just how the Delta variant continues to affect employment, reopening plans, and getting people back into the labor force is still to be seen as the economy continues its recovery.

"I think that while there are signs that there's underlying momentum in the economy, things are getting better. It's just that progress has been slowed by Delta," Bunker said.