"Two releases-the November Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and December's private-payroll report from ADP-tell the same story from different vantage points. Hiring demand is cooling fast, and worker movement has frozen, yet employers are also still reluctant to cut staff. The result is a labor market stuck in a strange, late-cycle equilibrium that Swonk said looks nothing like past expansions."
"In a healthy economy, people quit for better-paying roles, driving wage growth for everyone. Today, however, workers are "clinging on" to the jobs they have out of sheer fear, Swonk said. This lack of movement has created a kind of mobility trap where the natural path to a middle-class raise has essentially vanished. While ADP data shows that "job-changers" saw pay growth accelerate to 6.6% in December, Swonk argues this is a statistical distortion."
Hiring demand is cooling rapidly while worker movement has frozen, even as layoffs remain low and the stock market rises. Job openings fell to about 7.1 million in November, nearly 900,000 fewer than a year earlier, and the quit rate stayed at 2.0%, a level of inertia not seen since January 2014. Workers are holding onto existing jobs out of fear, reducing mobility and eliminating the usual path to middle-class wage gains. ADP shows job-changers experienced accelerated pay growth, but that increase may reflect statistical distortions rather than broad labor-market strength.
Read at Fortune
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]