Transportation and warehousing shed 34,000 jobs in August. The decline suggests that our K-12 schools are yet again starting the school year with many unfilled vacancies." Local government education was a weak point, however, despite early and aggressive back-to-school recruiting campaigns across school districts. "Leisure and hospitality, nursing homes and childcare centers posted robust gains. Pollak said that the industries with a headcount shortfall relative to pre-pandemic levels continued their slow recovery. "Leisure and hospitality also saw gains, albeit at a slower pace due to lower seasonal demand. Our teams are getting ready for peak holiday shopping season, so we can anticipate industries such as retail, supply chain and logistics, customer service, and transportation to begin to rise in coming months as well." "Health care once again led job growth in August, adding a strong 71,000 jobs," said Geno Cutolo, head of Adecco North America. "The prime-age labor force participation rate moved up to 83.5 percent and the prime-age employment-to-population ratio went up to 80.9 percent."Īaron Terrazas, chief economist at Glassdoor, noted that unemployment has been remarkably muted given the sharp increase in interest rates over the past year. "An expanding labor force is a good thing," Flowers said. The labor force participation rate rose to 62.8 percent, the highest since February 2020. Unemployment unexpectedly rose because the pool of available workers expanded noticeably, by 736,000 people, said Andrew Flowers, lead labor economist at Appcast. Another, more encompassing unemployment measure that includes discouraged workers as well as those working part-time for economic reasons jumped to 7.1 percent, the highest it's been since May 2022. The unemployment rate rose in August to 3.8 percent from 3.5 percent in July, the highest since February 2022. "Further rate hikes will negatively impact jobs and people's lives." "Now, more than ever, it's important for the Fed to pause and let the data catch up with what we are seeing on the ground," Wahlquist said. Richard Wahlquist, CEO of the American Staffing Association, sees the latest employment report as another sign that the Federal Reserve's campaign to raise interest rates should be paused.įederal Reserve officials watch the BLS report closely to determine whether borrowing costs need to be raised again to slow the economy and keep inflation down. labor market continues to come back to earth from a very high peak," he said. "Payroll gains continue to slow down, wage growth is moderating slowly, and labor force participation is trending upward. Monthly payroll gains are still running faster than the neutral pace of 70,000-100,000 needed simply to keep pace with population growth, but are trending toward that threshold."īunker added that job creation was never going to keep up with the pace from 2022 and wages weren't going to grow indefinitely at an over 6 percent annual rate. "The labor market remains solid," agreed Nick Bunker, head of Economic Research at the Indeed Hiring Lab. "It's high enough to keep the unemployment rate low while creating more opportunities for workers to come in off the sidelines, but low enough so as not to cause a resurgence of inflation." The labor market overall is at "an ideal cruising altitude," said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. "With pandemic paranoia about hiring lingering, companies are continuing to hold onto their workers, remembering how hard it was to rehire." "After red-hot post-pandemic hiring, we are seeing a slow glide into a cooler labor market this Labor Day weekend," said Becky Frankiewicz, president and chief commercial officer of ManpowerGroup. The pace of job creation is starting to more closely resemble 2019, before the pandemic labor market led first to tremendous job losses and then to big monthly job gains during the recovery. And current job growth is well below the 400,000 average monthly gain in 2022. Over the summer, 150,000 jobs were added on average each month, down from a 238,000 average gain in the spring. Employers created 187,000 new jobs in August and monthly employment totals were downgraded by a combined 110,000 in June and July, according to the latest employment report from the U.S.
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