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Sharpen your pencils and shine your stethoscopes: If you’re looking for the drivers of the resilient labor market, they might be behind a desk at your local school or staffing your local hospital.
They were largely responsible for a June jobs report that came in hotter than expected, with the country adding 147,000 jobs — far outpacing the consensus forecast of 111,000 — and unemployment unexpectedly ticking down.
Payroll additions in state and local government education, as well as private healthcare and social services, masked weakness elsewhere. Those sectors alone added about 122,000 jobs in June. White-collar job seekers are facing a struggle, as roles feel increasingly scarce and hundreds of applications lead to dead ends.
“If you’re not a teacher, if you’re not a nurse, and you’re not a doctor, you’re not seeing those opportunities,” Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said. An industry breakdown of payrolls shows that professional and business services, a white-collar sector, shed roles from May to June.
The gains in education and healthcare might be in part because schools were more hesitant to let folks go this summer, perhaps due to ongoing teacher labor shortages.
“Probably what’s going on here is that there were smaller-than-expected summer layoffs in the education sector, which could be about teachers or it could also be about support staff, like school bus drivers or custodial staff,” Daniel Zhao, lead economist at Glassdoor, said.
If that is the case, Zhao said, “we might get an equivalently sized drop in the fall when schools reopen due to a smaller-than-expected hiring.” He added that the new data is likely a seasonal quirk, rather than a sustainable increase in roles.
The private sector, which encompasses roles outside government employment, added 74,000 jobs in June, missing the expected 105,000. Within that, employment in the healthcare and social assistance sector increased by 58,600.
Stahle said that with healthcare, social assistance, and state and local government making up much of the job growth in June, “that’s not necessarily reflective of a robust labor market that’s benefiting everybody.”
For workers who already have the qualifications for teaching and healthcare, which often require degrees or specialized training, June’s numbers may be a good sign. But for everyone else, the job market is still looking murky.
“If you’re already in the labor market, you’re in pretty good shape,” Stahle said. “But if you’re out of it and you’re looking for work, things are going to feel a lot different right now.”
Are you a white-collar professional looking for work, or are you trying to get into education or healthcare? Contact these reporters to share your story at [email protected] and [email protected].
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