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<\/p>\n Email Link<\/p>\n \n After years of plentiful employment opportunities<\/a>, healthy pay bumps and pandemic savings-fueled spending sprees, American workers now face a sobering economic reality: It\u2019s getting harder and harder to find work, and more and more industries are shedding jobs.\n <\/p>\n \n The latest jobs report<\/a>, released Friday, indicated that the US economy added about 22,000 jobs in August and the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%, the highest it\u2019s been in nearly four years.\n <\/p>\n \n The job market is \u201cstalling,\u201d Glassdoor economist Daniel Zhao told CNN on Friday, \u201cit\u2019s slowing to a dangerous speed.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Job growth is practically nonexistent.\n <\/p>\n \n And if the labor market is showing signs of a cold<\/a>, that doesn\u2019t bode well for the overall health of the economy.\n <\/p>\n \n Here\u2019s a rundown of the latest data, and how the situation could turn around or take a turn for the worse:\n <\/p>\n \n Job growth hasn\u2019t just been weak, it turned negative recently: During the past three months, the US economy has seen a net gain of roughly 29,000 jobs per month, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.\n <\/p>\n \n If that sounds soft, it\u2019s because it is: Excluding the massive employment plunge<\/a> at the start of the pandemic, that\u2019s the slowest three-month average since the summer of 2010, when the United States was still clawing its way back from the Great Recession.\n <\/p>\n \n Bringing that average down was a now-negative report for June. The second revision for that month (which includes more comprehensive dispatches<\/a> from US businesses) now shows a net loss of 13,000 jobs.\n <\/p>\n \n More industries lost jobs in August than added them: The jobs report contains a nerdy little gauge (a diffusion index) that is meant show the breadth of employment changes across 250 private-sector industries.\n <\/p>\n \n If it\u2019s above 50, that means more industries added jobs than lost them. It\u2019s been under 50 since April and measured 49.6 in August. Most of those gains, however, were minimal.\n <\/p>\n \n And the hardest-hit sectors are those in the goods business: The impact of President Donald Trump\u2019s tariff policy<\/a>, and the whipsaw manner in which it\u2019s being applied, is having an \u201cundeniable\u201d impact on hiring, RSM US economist Joe Brusuelas wrote in a note to investors Friday.\n <\/p>\n \n Goods businesses have posted \u201cfour straight months of declines since May,\u201d he wrote. \u201cManufacturing, which was supposed to benefit from restrictive trade policies, instead slipped into reverse as supply chain uncertainty deepened.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Opportunities are growing increasingly limited: The health care industry, which has an aging US populus working in its favor, has been a leading driver of employment growth in recent years.\n <\/p>\n \n Now it\u2019s practically the only game in town.\n <\/p>\n \n Health care businesses added an estimated 46,800 jobs in August. The industry, however, accounts for only 15% of overall US employment, BLS data shows.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cFor 85% of workers, they\u2019re not seeing a lot of the jobs added,\u201d Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn\u2019s head of economics Americas, told CNN this week.\n <\/p>\n \n The \u201ccanary in the coal mine\u201d is chirping: The unemployment rate for Black workers in the United States rose again last month to 7.5%, the highest level since October 2021.\n <\/p>\n \n During the past two months, the unemployment rate for Black workers has risen considerably higher, jumping from 6% to 6.8% in June and then to 7.2% in July.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe unemployment rate for Black workers will usually rise more than for [White workers] when the labor market weakens, but they usually move in the same direction,\u201d economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted on Friday.\n <\/p>\n \n By comparison, the unemployment rate for White workers fell by 0.1 percentage point, to 3.7%.\n <\/p>\n \n A rise in the Black unemployment rate<\/a> is often considered the \u201ccanary in the coal mine,\u201d<\/a> foretelling a broader-scale job market slowdown.\n <\/p>\n \n Black workers are disproportionately employed in frontline and lower-wage industries as well as the government workforce. Economists warned earlier this year that Trump\u2019s sweeping policy changes related to trade<\/a>, immigration<\/a>, federal employment reductions<\/a>, as well as a crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion<\/a> efforts, could reverse some of the historic employment gains<\/a> made recently by women, Black workers, Latino workers and other underrepresented Americans.\n <\/p>\n \n Economic headwinds and uncertainty are putting a drag on hiring: There\u2019s not one single cause for the slowing job market, but uncertainty certainly hasn\u2019t helped, Glassdoor economist Zhao said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cEven before this year, the job market was on a slowing trend, interest rates have been fairly high, but we do see with the data in the last few months that some of these tariff-sensitive sectors like manufacturing or construction have slowed and in fact, started losing jobs,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, there does seem to be some impact from tariffs and the uncertainty associated with them.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s not just the fact that there are these tariffs being implemented, policy uncertainty makes it very hard for businesses to commit to hiring plans,\u201d he added.\n <\/p>\n \n Rising unemployment can get out of hand \u2026 quickly: The unemployment rate of 4.3% still lands within that \u201chealthy\u201d\/full employment arena, but if it keeps rising, that\u2019s a big problem.\n <\/p>\n \n Unemployment has stayed relatively low in part because of dampened demand for workers as well as a depressed supply (people aging out of the workforce as well as reductions in immigrant workers).\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cBut, as we start to see unemployment rise, that does start to suggest that this is not just because of shifts on the labor supply side,\u201d Zhao said. \u201cWhen unemployment starts to rise, those impacts can start to stack up very quickly and unpredictably.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n And if the job market cools further, that means less money in the pockets of American households \u2014 and less spending to support more hiring.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThat can build into a cycle of a sharper economic slowdown,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n But a recession isn\u2019t necessarily imminent: The current labor market dynamics are a function of cyclical and structural factors driven largely by trade and immigration policy, said Brusuelas. Those dynamics, as well as the effects of \u201cpervasive uncertainty\u201d will play out over the near to medium term, he noted Friday.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe expect growth and hiring to reaccelerate as the combination of interest rate cuts, tax cuts and full expensing of business investment bolster demand for labor later this year and early next,\u201d he wrote in the note. \u201cThus, we do not expect the economy to slip into recession in the near term.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
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