ZipRecruiter’s Labor Economist breaks down the truth about today’s job market.
Transcript:
Caroline Woods: Joining me now, Nicole Bachaud, Labor Economist at ZipRecruiter. Nicole, Thanks so much for joining me here at the desk.
Nicole Bachaud: Thanks, Caroline. I’m excited to get into this conversation.
Caroline Woods: Yeah we’re going to do the check in on the jobs market. And I have to say the headlines have been dire. I was taking a look at some worst time to be a college graduate in years. College grads face worse jobs, market in a decade. Private sector loses jobs in September. What’s going on with the jobs market. Is it as bad as the headlines seem?
Nicole Bachaud: So we’ve seen a lot of slow movement in the jobs market over the past several months. Employers and workers are both feeling stuck in place due to economic uncertainty and rising issues that are impacting beyond the labor market. We’re seeing workers who are job hugging, sticking tightly to positions that they might have otherwise vacated. At the same time that we’re seeing employers pulling back on hiring, slowing down growth in order to cut costs as they’re seeing tariffs eat into their bottom lines more and more, and trying to figure out how the changes to all of these different policies and macroeconomic conditions are going to continue to impact their business moving forward. So we’re seeing that slowing down. A lot of the movement in the labor market. We’re coming off of that pandemic peak post pandemic peak in 2022. So this feels like a really, really slow labor market in comparison to a really hot kind of frenzied time. So the stark back and forth has been why I think we’re seeing a lot of people feeling a more dire than maybe even some of the numbers could suggest otherwise.
Caroline Woods: So is it just that it’s harder, maybe, to find a job right now. But it’s not necessarily that a lot of people are losing their jobs right now?
Nicole Bachaud: Yeah we’re seeing this shift between, you know, no, we’re not seeing a lot of layoffs. We’re seeing layoffs and terminations remaining historically low. We’re seeing the quits rate also remaining historically low. So we’re not seeing a lot of people vacating those positions. But at the same time, we’re seeing unemployment, which, while low, has been starting to pick up a little bit. We currently have more unemployed people than there are job openings for them to jump into.
Caroline Woods: Yeah, it’s interesting you talk about job hugging, which I can assume what that means. But if job hopping is lower and tenure is increasing, do you think that’s a temporary shift or something that could be more permanent?
Nicole Bachaud: From the data that we’re seeing internally from ZipRecruiter surveys and our marketplace platform, we’re seeing that the response to job hugging and staying in place for a lot of workers is really driven by macroeconomic uncertainty. A stable paycheck is better than the risk of going and looking for a different opportunity. So we’re seeing the current conditions really driving a lot of that change. But businesses are seeming to embrace the stability and the loyalty from their workforce. We’re seeing the focus on institutional knowledge and other factors of keeping your workplace stable that are benefiting businesses as they’re looking to reduce those costs, reduce hiring costs and keep things a little bit more flatlined for the time being.
Caroline Woods: You mentioned your survey. You just did a new hire survey. So some people out there, if their new hires have been able to find jobs, and I have to say, I was taking a look at some of the takeaways and they were pretty surprising to me. Searches are speeding up, response times are improving. The need to mass apply is on the way out. So that all sounds good?
Nicole Bachaud: So what we’re seeing right now is in response to a lot of the uncertainty in the market, job seekers and who are becoming new hires are really focusing in on the types of jobs that they can see themselves in long term, and that are more matched to their current qualifications. While we saw the smaller share of new hires getting into their dream job, we’re seeing more people actually satisfied with the jobs they’re getting into, focusing on things like flexibility, culture fit, and other aspects beyond pay and beyond title that are more important for finding stability and longevity in their position that they’re jumping into.
Caroline Woods: Well, on that note, I did see that women are far more likely to it focuses much on pay. They’re more likely to focus on things like culture and flexibility. Yeah what could that mean for the gender pay gap?
Nicole Bachaud: So we just received data. The census just put out their updated pay outlook from 2024 data.
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