jump in openings in April<\/a> was likely an overstatement of labor demand.\n <\/p>\n\n That doesn\u2019t appear to be the case. Tuesday\u2019s report could provide further evidence that the US labor market is not only stabilizing but also is poised for expansion.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe hiring recession is over, and we are starting to see more industries look for workers again, and that\u2019s really good news,\u201d Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, told CNN in an interview Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n
\n Job openings increased across a variety of industries in May, including leisure and hospitality and wholesale trade as well as construction and manufacturing. Job postings shrank in industries such as healthcare, finance and tech, Tuesday\u2019s report showed.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a winners and losers story,\u201d Long said. \u201cSome industries, particularly the blue-collar sectors, appear to be rebounding, while some others \u2013 obviously tech and finance \u2013 continue to be weak.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Technology and finance employment has been particularly squeezed by the rise in adoption of artificial intelligence technologies.\n <\/p>\n
\n The US labor market has been stuck in a \u201clow-hire, low-fire\u201d rut for much of the past two years. After the post-pandemic boom, job growth started to normalize but slowed further due to a combination of factors (among them a shrinking labor force as well as high uncertainty around major shifts in federal policy).\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cNow it seems that there\u2019s a correction to the correction \u2013 that companies are realizing AI can\u2019t do it all, that they still need workers, and they\u2019re realizing that demand is strong enough to merit more hiring,\u201d Long said. \u201cIt\u2019s still cautious \u2026 there\u2019s definitely a cautious expansion in hiring.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Tuesday\u2019s report showed just that. Despite businesses\u2019 increased appetite to expand their workforces, not all are pulling the trigger: The number of new hires dropped for the third month in a row.\n <\/p>\n
\n Hiring remaining subdued while job openings and total employment rise is \u201cnot a contradiction,\u201d noted Sneha Puri, economist at Indeed.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt just means recent employment gains are being driven more by a historic drop in separations than by new hiring activity. Fewer people are losing or leaving their jobs, but not many more people are getting them.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Part of that is likely because there are fewer workers in the labor pool, said Noah Yosif, chief economist at the American Staffing Association.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe stall in job openings is being offset by a smaller labor supply, due to a smaller working-age population,\u201d he wrote in a note on Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n
\n At the same time, May\u2019s JOLTS data didn\u2019t show a significant shift in layoffs or the number of people voluntarily quitting their jobs (an indicator that workers aren\u2019t yet confident enough in the labor market to jump ship).\n <\/p>\n
\n A separate report released Tuesday showed that Americans remain fairly pessimistic about the labor market.\n <\/p>\n
\n The Conference Board\u2019s latest Consumer Confidence Index edged higher in June thanks to lower gas prices, but \u201cperceptions of the current labor market softened measurably as the percentage of consumers saying jobs were \u2018hard to get\u2019 rose to 22.5%, the highest level since January 2021,\u201d Dana Peterson, the Conference Board\u2019s chief economist, said in a release.\n <\/p>\n
\n She added that respondents anticipate \u201clittle change\u201d in the labor market in the next six months.\n <\/p>\n
\n The US job market appears to have turned a corner in recent months. The economy added an estimated 172,000 jobs in May<\/a>, which marked the third consecutive month of 100,000 more jobs added. The unemployment rate has held steady at 4.3%.\n <\/p>\n\n Economists are expecting another decent month of employment growth in June.\n <\/p>\n
\n The latest jobs report, which is due out Thursday because of the July 4th holiday, is expected to show that the economy added about 100,000 jobs last month while the unemployment rate remained unchanged.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good news for job seekers: The number of available positions in the United States increased for the second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-735169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}