What does the new prime job market mean to you?

• Indeed's Nick Bunker says we're entering an era of a "more boring labor market."

• Business Insider investigates how components of the labor market are stabilizing, like wage growth.

• Bon reson said that "job seekers still have some bargaining power," but added that "more employees are staying put."

If you've just recently joined the workforce, you may be wondering what's going on with the sky-high number of job openings, the large number of job losers in the "Great Layoff Wave," and the fiery wage increases.

The labor market looks more like the healthy-but-boring days of 2018 or 2019, Nick Bunker, director of economic research mass resonance for North America at Indeed Hiring Lab, told Business Insider. It's not the same dramatic volatility we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bunker said that the gueatness we've seen in the employment data is diminishing.

"That's a good thing in my opinion," Bunker said, because it's been "very gue dramatic" for a few years.

Despite this, job growth remains strong; the United States just added 303,000 jobs in March, though at a slower pace than during the worst of the pandemic's recurrence.

Wage growth has slowed. Since the spring of 2023, the percentage of Americans working or looking for work has remained essentially stable. The job openings rate has also declined, with three consecutive months of 5.31 TP3T. Layoffs and firings have been relatively low.

A more boring but stable labor market could be good news for workers and job seekers, and ZipRecruiter's Premier Economist Julia Pollak told Business Insider that this small change is great while the labor market remains resilient, stable and strong.

"Everything is going better than most people predicted," Bora resonance said.

Pola resonated with the employment strengths of the construction and manufacturing sectors. construction employment in March was 7.81 TP3T above the pre-pandemic level of February 2020. manufacturing employment increased by 1.41 TP3T, and its employment was unchanged from February and March of this year.

After the ups and downs of the early days of the pandemic, the long-feared recession has not yet occurred, and may not even occur." Says Bora resonance, "I think stability is something to be celebrated at a time when high interest rates and restrictive monetary policies are expected to lead to losses and recession." And, most of the recent small changes are headed in the right direction."

The U.S. may be in a golden age of job market. The four charts below show this situation.

Duties

Those looking for new jobs have bargaining power, but workers are more likely to stick with their current jobs.

"Job seekers still have some bargaining power, but are less willing to demonstrate it by leaving a job," Bunker says." With fewer new job opportunities and smaller salary increases for changing roles, more employees are choosing to stay put. Nevertheless, layoffs remain low, so workers have strong job security compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Newly released data for February show that the U.S. jobless rate has remained at 2.21 TP3T for four consecutive months. The rate has cooled from 3.01 TP3T in April 2022. 3.5 million people quit jobs in February, a metric that the BLS press release notes is "little changed."

Wage Increase

From March 2023 to March this year, average hourly earnings increased by 4.1%, lower than the year-on-year increase in March 2022 of around 6%.

Although Koon's growth rate has slowed down, wages have been rising faster than prices recently, which means that workers have more purchasing power.

"It means real money in the pockets of working families," Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Jasper Jasper told Business Insider, "and that's exactly what we want to see."

Inflation, as measured by the year-on-year rate of change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), climbed slightly in March, but remained less of a problem compared to the same month last year. From March 2023 to March 2024, the inflation rate climbed by 3.51 TP3T, while from February 2023 to February 2024, the inflation rate grew by 3.21 TP3T.

The Fed may be more inclined to lower interest rates later this year as wage growth slows. Bora resonance said the slowdown in wage growth "is good news for the Fed, which is still fighting inflation.

According to 12-month median moving average wage growth data from the Federal Reserve of Atlanta's Wage Growth Tracker, job hoppers experienced higher wage growth than job holders. However, wage growth slowed for both job hoppers and caretakers alike.

"Nominal wage growth may have slowed, but real wage growth - which is what really matters to workers' purchasing power - remains positive and high," Pola resonance told the IFP." Real wages are still rising steadily for job hoppers and current workers, who have apparently kept much of the leverage they gained during the pandemic. They are being recruited, negotiating job offers, and receiving counteroffers from older employers who validate them, and they intend to hold on to them at historically high prices."

Unemployment Insurance Application

First-time applications for unemployment insurance can be a useful indicator of layoffs, where the number of people applying for unemployment insurance spikes as more people lose their jobs. Currently, the number of first-time applicants for unemployment insurance is pitifully low, suggesting that a major layoff has not yet occurred.

From the week ending March 30th to the week ending April 6th, the number of first-time applicants declined. In total, the number of first-time applicants so far this year has been low compared to the high level of weekly applicants during the pandemic.

"While there has been much speculation that employment has slowed, recent data, including job openings and initial jobless claims, continue to suggest that the U.S. labor market is stabilizing," said Raymond James Premier Economist Eugenio Alemán in a note earlier this month. The U.S. labor market has remained stable.

Unemployment rate

In January 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.41 TP3T, having spiked to double digits during the spring 2020 pandemic shutdown. In March of this year, the unemployment rate fell to 3.81 TP3T, slightly above the historic lows of most of the past two years.

There was also little change in the number of people moving from employment to unemployment; this figure has been around 1.5 million in each of the past few months.

So, how will the job market for "blondes" change?

"It would be nice," Bunker said, "if we lived in a world of low unemployment, where wage growth was steady and sustained, and more people were entering the labor force." So let's hope that we see some strong gains for workers and job seekers after the days of the GUE are behind us. But let there be no sense of confusion."

Although job vacancies, wage increases and hiring rates have all declined, the entire labor market can be said to be more like "Goldilocks", that is, not too hot and not too cold.

"This is a strong labor market with a path of sustainable growth ahead of it," Bunker said.

Juliana Kaplan reports.

Read the original article on Business Insider