231,000 people nationwide filed first-time claims for unemployment last week. That’s about average these days. According to the most recent monthly jobs report, the number of people who were hired in August and the number who were let go — or quit — were about equal. Which means employers aren’t rushing to lay people off but, they’re not exactly hiring like crazy, either. And the unemployment rate hasn’t gone up much.

That’s a job market dynamic that Fed Chair Jerome Powell has called a “curious balance.”

Employers over the last few months, generally speaking, have become less and less thrilled with the idea of hiring new people.

“We’ve seen a lot of that low hire, much less demand for new workers and job postings,” said Cory Stahle, a senior economist at Indeed.

Lots of reasons — a couple years of higher interest rates and a general slowdown in the economy. But employers are also not firing a ton of people. 

“Employers are kind of acting like deer in the headlights right now,” said Aaron Sojourner, a senior economist with the Upjohn Institute. “They’re blinded a bit. They’re uncertain what’s coming at them — there’ve been big swings in economic policy — so they’re really just scared to make a move.”

Now, usually, if businesses don’t want to hire, you get more people out of work looking for jobs. But that’s not quite what we’re getting.

“Because of immigration and migration policy, and perhaps even due to deportations, there are a lot fewer people available to work,” said Eric Winograd, chief economist at Alliance Bernstein.

Employers want fewer people working, and there are fewer people who want to work. The demand for labor, and the supply of labor are curiously in balance when they would not normally be. And Winograd said this balance is precarious. 

“When you’re already running at much lower rates of hiring, it doesn’t take very much to flip from net hiring to net layoff,” said Winograd.

The supply of jobs is pretty precarious right now too — there are fewer and fewer sectors that are still seeing strong hiring, said Indeed’s Stahle. Health care is the last one standing right now.

“You know, you take two legs of that tripod and you’re like ‘OK you might be able to balance on one leg,’” said Stahle.

But for how long?

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