No one's hiring, no one's firing, no one's quitting

A job market stuck in time, slowly deteriorating, or just about to break out?

• Job survey data says: “everyone freeze”

• Openings continue to fall, but not everywhere

• No one is hiring, but it’s also true that no one is firing, and no one is quitting

• Everyone is getting settled: hiring rate hits a series low

• Icy job market means Pow-pow must cut, right? There’s only one *little* problem.

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No one’s hiring, no one’s firing, no one’s quitting

Long time Random Walk readers know that whether and to what extent “labor demand” grows from here, is an important question.

Or, more precisely, whether and what extent we have a growing number of productive things to do, such that we need more people to do them (at prices worth paying), is an important question.

Demand for workers has been flat for ~2 years now.¹

What people have mistakenly called a “strong” labor market, has really been a labor market in catch-up mode: new jobs weren’t added, so much as a worker-exodus (aka “Worker Shortage”) was gradually reversed. Flat-demand, met suddenly short supply, which meant prices/wages go up, at least until the gap closed (which it now has).²

The status quo ante now restored, the question is “what next?”

Well, the new normal isn’t in dire straits just yet, but it’s still pretty stagnant (and trending the wrong way).

From the latest JOLTS report, “nobody move” is the hot new thing.

No one’s hiring

Job openings have stayed pretty flat, which is certainly better than further deterioration:

BLS

Total openings are now lower than they’ve been since the pandemic “reopening” began . . . but still a tad higher than they were before the pandemic started.

For what it’s worth, LinkUp tracks a slightly more favorable trend than JOLTS (and LinkUp has been closer to the truth in the past):

LinkUp

Linkup sees a little less softness in job openings than JOLTS, but still some softness.³

OK, so there are fewer unfilled opportunities out there than before. That much is clear.

If you want to know which sectors specifically are hiring, BLS is happy to tell you:

Job openings increased in accommodation and food services (+120,000) and in state and local government, excluding education (+94,000). The number of job openings decreased in durable goods manufacturing (-88,000) and in federal government (-62,000).

MoM growth for restaurants+ and state and local government, while MoM contraction for widget making.

To be honest, the narrative description of MoM changes isn’t really helpful to groking the bigger picture. For that, you need to plot the data (as I’m about to do).

In the bigger scheme of things, Healthcare is still plainly leading the way (as per usual), but is steadily declining: