Despite Dan Hevia’s prior layoffs, this one feels different.
Hevia, 42, a company development and marketing expert from the New York City region, has been unemployed since the summer. He said in a recent LinkedIn post that he had applied for over 1,000 jobs but has nothing to show for it.
I would have laughed (yeah for confidence!) if you had told me, when I was laid off in June, that I would be approaching six months without a job offer, Hevia wrote. But now it’s here, and wow, this job market regularly humbles you.
Hevia stated that he had little optimism for his career’s future in an interview with NBC News.
He remarked, “I’m still applying with shaky confidence, if not completely broken.”
A new, much more uncertain atmosphere has replaced the enthusiasm of the Great Resignation, a time after COVID-19 reopenings that brought a large reshuffling of positions and significant income improvements, for many people.
According to a study released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the hiring rate decreased to a level not seen since the United States was recovering from the financial crisis of the late 2000s, despite the fact that layoffs were still quite low and job opportunities rose in October.
The unemployment rate is still historically low at 4.2%. (For comparison, during the 1970s and 1980s, the unemployment rate never fell below 5%.)
Nevertheless, unemployment increased significantly from its pandemic-era low of 3.4% in April 2023, despite a slight decline in recent months.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics published its November employment figures on Friday. With 227,000 new payrolls, the total exceeded projections.
But the median length of unemployment reached 10.5 weeks, the highest since May 2017, and the unemployment rate increased to 4.2%.
Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management financial group, wrote in a note after the release on Friday that “labor demand is slowing,” pointing to the rising unemployment rate as well as the lower-than-expected revisions to payroll data from prior months due to the effects of hurricanes and strikes.
“The labor market has cracks,” she continued.
Current employees are unlikely to lose their employment, according to Guy Berger, chief economist of the Burning Glass Institute, a labor market research organization, in a recent interview.
In recent history, however, there has hardly been a worse moment to be searching for them.
In a recent interview, Berger stated, “I believe arguments that the job market is good.” “But it’s far from great,” he added.
He went on, “Hiring is too low; finding a job is really difficult.” The fact that many people are working is a good thing, but it’s not clear that we’re headed in the right direction.
The labor market’s sharp turn back toward employers seems to be a contributing factor in the issue: As general satisfaction with current employers has dropped to a historic low, a Gallup poll released Tuesday revealed that American workers are looking for new possibilities at the greatest rate since 2015.
Gallup analysts called the current era the Great Detachment in a poll report, pointing out that workers are feeling burned out as a result of the extensive organizational and disruptive changes brought on by the epidemic.
The survey yielded two important findings:
- Fewer than half the workers Gallup surveyed reported knowing what s expected of them at work.
- And just 30% said they strongly agree that the mission or purpose of their companies make them feel their jobs are important.
For the survey, those two results represent record lows.
According to Gallup, many managers are currently dealing with reduced budgets, changing staff, and taking on additional duties.
One of the survey’s analysts, Ben Wigert, a director of research and strategy at Gallup, stated in an interview that employees in the United States are growing increasingly estranged from their employers on important criteria.
According to Wigert, Gallup’s workplace measurements are comparable to their 2015 levels. However, the situation is different.
“People don’t feel secure making the leap to new roles because of inflation and the current jobs market cooling down a lot from the Great Resignation,” Wigert added. They are therefore stuck with this dissatisfaction. The circumstances are very different.
Prior to the November presidential election, voters repeatedly placed the U.S. economy as their top worry. However, neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris presented economic plans that prioritized rapid employment expansion. Voters ultimately chastised the Biden-Harris administration for fostering an unstable economy, hoping to restore the conditions that existed throughout Trump’s first term.
It’s unclear how much the labor market will improve from here, even if many people think business conditions will undoubtedly improve once Trump returns to the White House on promises of less regulations. According to Wells Fargo researchers’ 2025 economic estimate, payroll growth would likely moderate and the unemployment rate is expected to remain at present levels.
The economists wrote that the more modest pace of job gains is likely to be caused by a slower-growing pool of workers, a generally more muted economic growth backdrop due to tariffs, the completion of [pandemic] catch-up hiring in industries that have disproportionately driven payroll growth over the past year (such as healthcare, government, and leisure & hospitality), and still-restrictive monetary policy.
Hiring will probably continue to plod for some time to come due to a weakening employment market and economic conditions that are still too tight for comfort.
Not all economists concur that there are extraordinary tensions in the American labor market, and those that do exist sometimes have clear-cut reasons. Goldman Sachs analysts noted last month that the surge in immigration over the last two years is contributing to the rise in the jobless rate in a note assessing the status of the U.S. economy.
They claimed job prospects in several areas should start to lessen as border apprehensions decline.
According to the researchers, there are many job vacancies and a low layoff rate. Even though there isn’t any concrete proof that the labor market has stabilized yet, trend job growth seems robust enough to stabilize and eventually reduce the unemployment rate now that immigration is slowing down.
Thomas Ryan, an economist with the Capital Economics research group, stated in a separate note issued on Wednesday that new BLS data indicated the labor market was stabilizing at a healthy level and finding a floor as businesses continue to be sluggish with hiring and firing.
According to Vanguard analysts, however, an employment boom similar to the one that took place during the epidemic reopenings might not materialize for some time.
According to a recent research, big firms are recruiting new employees cautiously. Furthermore, employment for lower-paying positions is still returning to its pre-pandemic recovery highs.
Even if rising labor productivity—which is partly due to advances in artificial intelligence—will continue to be robust in 2025, job losses are probably going to be less frequent. According to Vanguard experts, the rate at which businesses hire new employees is probably going to stay at its current low level.
For workers like Hevia, that might mean there is no end in sight to their worries about finding a job. He has lowered his expectations for a position and a salary at the senior level he formerly had, but for the time being, he has continued to apply for consulting work.
“Anything is better than nothing at this point,” he remarked.
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