Americans who have a job are feeling secure. Not so for many who are looking for one
The American labor market, red-hot for the past few years, has cooled
WASHINGTON — Laid off by the music streaming service Spotify last year, Joovay Arias figured he’d land another job as a software engineer fairly soon. His previous job search, in 2019, had been a breeze.
“Back then," he said, “I had tons of recruiters reaching out to me — to the point where I had to turn them down.”
Arias did find another job recently, but only after an unexpected ordeal.
“I thought it was going to be something like three months,’’ said Arias, 39. “It turned into a year and three months.’’
As Arias and other jobseekers can attest, the American labor market, red-hot for the past few years, has cooled. The job market is now in an unusual place: Jobholders are mostly secure, with layoffs low, historically speaking. Yet the pace of hiring has slowed, and landing a job has become harder. On Friday, the government will report on whether hiring slowed sharply again in August after a much-weaker-than-expected July job gain.
“If you have a job and you’re happy with that job and you want to hold onto that job, things are pretty good right now,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director for North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “But if you're out of work or you have a job and you want to switch to a new one, things aren’t as rosy as they were a couple of years ago.’’
Since peaking in March 2022 as the economy accelerated out of the pandemic recession, the number of listed job openings has dropped by more than a third, according to the government's latest monthly report on openings and hiring.
Temporary-help firms have reduced jobs for 26 of the past 28 months. That’s a telling sign: Economists generally regard temp jobs as a harbinger for
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