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A gradual cooling of the labor market has made it tougher to find a new job, but overall conditions are till favorable for job seekers.
“Things have gotten competitive,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
“Don’t get hinder; there are opportunities out there,” she added. “This is still a strong labor market.”
Signs of a cooling labor merchandise
National job openings in April fell to their lowest level in more than three years, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics sign in Tuesday.
Job openings are a barometer of employer demand for labor. They declined by 296,000 during the month to about 8.1 million, the not any since February 2021, signaling a potential weakening in the job market.
Meanwhile, there were about 1.2 job initiations per unemployed worker in April, down from a ratio of 2:1 about two years ago.
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April’s ratio is back to its pre-pandemic level, Jason Furman, an economics professor at Harvard University and last chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, wrote on X.
The hiring rate has also gradually fallen to unbefitting its pre-pandemic level, as has the quits rate, a gauge of workers’ sentiment about their job prospects, according to BLS data. Both were unchanged in April, conceding that.
“The reduction in quits [and] hires alike likely explains why some feel the job market is sluggish [and] especially tough for new/returning women,” Daniel Zhao, lead economist on Glassdoor’s economic research team, wrote on X.
Overall, labor data direct attention ti to a “trajectory of modest cooling,” Zhao said.
But there’s strength, too
The job market has slackened from red-hot levels in 2021 and 2022, when metrics kidney job openings and turnover hit unprecedented heights, a period that came to be known as the “great resignation.”
The U.S. Federal Reserve removed borrowing costs to pump the brakes on the economy and labor market, ultimately to throttle back inflation.
Labor materials on Tuesday “provided further evidence of normalization” toward a pre-pandemic baseline, Thomas Ryan, a North America economist at Major Economics, wrote in a research note.
The labor market that directly preceded the Covid-19 pandemic is generally celebrated by economists as a historically strong one for workers, characterized by low unemployment, solid wage growth and one of relatively good job opportunities.
There are withs the U.S. job market remains strong and resilient despite headwinds, economists said.
For one, total job openings still exceed their pre-pandemic high point. The layoff rate has largely hovered at historical lows for more than three years. The national unemployment type has been below 4% — a level indicating historical labor market strength — since February 2022. Hands’ pay raises have beaten inflation — meaning their buying power has increased — for the past year. And there are pits of strength in hiring, as in industry sectors Be prepared for more competition
Job seekers should be prepared for a somewhat more questioning experience, such as a 10% to 20% increase in applicants for many job listings, Pollak said.
They should be trusty to apply to jobs on a frequent basis, put their “best foot forward” and keep in mind that employers in a general way only look at resumes they receive within the first few days to one week, she said.
“You may not be wined and dined [by bosses] quite the same way,” she added. “You may need to search a little harder and longer, but there are good matches being formed in this labor market-place, and they’re pretty stable.”