Unemployment claims are at their lowest number since January
Unemployment claims are at their lowest number since January
The total number of people collecting unemployment benefits is down this week. Initial jobless claims — that’s people filing for the first time — dropped by about 20,000. And people who’ve been filing dropped just a bit more than that to about 1.66 million. That’s the lowest that number’s been since the start of this year. And it’s a sign that this labor market is still pretty tight, even after the last year and a half of rate hikes loosened things a bit.
After weathering some blustery economic headwinds, business owners and employees might just be approaching calmer waters, said Luke Pardue at payroll firm Gusto.
“Business owners can expand when they want to, they can selectively backfill roles, workers who have been laid off have a relatively easy time finding a new job, and all of those are really encouraging cycles that kind of head off any recessionary signals we might be seeing,” Pardue said.
Also optimistic about avoiding a recession is Layla O’Kane, an economist at Lightcast. She said while the labor market may have been cooling, it ain’t cool. That means employers with many job openings are holding on to talent.
“And instead of saying, ‘Hey, workers, we’re going to lay you off,’ they’re just taking down those openings and sort of accepting the fact that they’re probably not going to be able to get people in those jobs and making do with what they have,” O’Kane said.
And it’s more than just making do, said Kathleen Quinn Votaw with recruitment firm TalenTrust. She said keeping in-demand workers happy is also important for the bottom line.
“If you don’t have somebody to serve your customers or do the work, you’re just not going to be able to capture the revenue and the gross margin. Because at the end of the day, robots can’t replace everything,” Votaw said.
And big hiring sprees — or armies of robot workers, for that matter — are not exactly on the horizon for a lot of companies.
“Many of our customers tell us that these high rates are reducing the hiring plans, because in order to expand head count, they need to open another location or invest in more equipment,” said Julia Pollak with ZipRecruiter.
But even without big expansions, there are still more jobs out there than workers available to fill them.
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