{"id":363348,"date":"2026-04-04T11:18:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T11:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/363348\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T11:18:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T11:18:19","slug":"us-hiring-drops-in-sign-of-labor-market-chill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/363348\/","title":{"rendered":"US hiring drops in sign of labor market chill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US businesses are hiring at their lowest non-pandemic rate since 2011, hinting at a deep chill in the labor market. <\/p>\n<p>Hiring as a percentage of total employment dropped from 3.4% in January to 3.1% in February, while job openings fell. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/economy\/jobs\/u-s-job-openings-and-hiring-fell-in-february-39d3e609\" class=\"_linkEmbed_10lxo_29\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Overall, 92,000 jobs were lost<\/a>, and the voluntary quitting rate dropped \u2014 seen as a measure of employees\u2019 confidence in their ability to find new work. <\/p>\n<p>The slump predates the Iran war, which began on Feb. 28: A worrying sign, one analyst noted, since the conflict\u2019s impact on shipping and energy markets will increase costs for businesses, which \u201cmay be forced to reckon with tough decisions such as <a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2026\/03\/31\/economy\/us-jolts-job-openings-layoffs-february\" class=\"_linkEmbed_10lxo_29\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">raising prices or reducing hours and workforce<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/21eae143ae4ef7bfaac1073e2b7d30686862943d-1599x1605.jpg\"  alt=\"A chart showing the monthly change in US jobs. \" width=\"740\" height=\"742\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" fetchpriority=\"high\" class=\"_imageEmbed_1jdgl_38 _fullContentArea_1jdgl_42\" style=\"max-width:100%;color:transparent\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US businesses are hiring at their lowest non-pandemic rate since 2011, hinting at a deep chill in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-363348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}